CONDITIONS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION 31 



ourselves with their causes: our business in this 

 volume being with their consequences. It is worth 

 notinsr, however, that the fact of variation is that 

 about which the theologico-scientihc controversy 

 now rages. In the " Origin of Species " Darwin 

 took the fact of variation for granted, and showed 

 the consequences which may follow from it, without 

 any attempt to explain it. Since the dwindling 

 body of anti-evolutionists have gone so far as actually 

 to study the question before pronouncing an opinion 

 upon it, they have made the signal discovery that 

 Darwin did not explain the origin of variation ! 

 Obviously this is a magnificent opportunity for the 

 " theology of gaps." Nowadays the opponents of 

 the law of continuity are compelled to follow the 

 canon of ancient drama, that the intervention of a 

 god must not be employed by the dramatist, save 

 where the occasion really warrants such an extreme 

 measure. Such an occasion is furnished by our 

 present ignorance — which, by the way, has almost 

 disappeared — of the origin of variations ; and so it 

 is argued that the Directive and Designing Principle 

 — which has been proved to be inoperative else- 

 where — yet really controls the whole process of 

 organic evolution, and thus determines its results 

 by a judicious introduction of those variations upon 

 which the very possibility of evolution, by the 

 admission of the evolutionists themselves, depends. 

 There are some theories which to state is to refute. 



