48 ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



CHAPTER VIII 



THE FACTOES OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION- 

 ARE THERE ANY STILL UNKNOWN? 



Formidable though the evidence for organic evolu- 

 tion be, and finally though the belief in it has been 

 established by the work of the past half-century, 

 it would be idle to deny that there is yet diffi- 

 culty enough in explaining many of the facts of 

 animal and vegetable life. Darwin himself said 

 that he could never think of the eye without some- 

 thing like a shiver — for indeed there does appear 

 to be something worse than presumption in the 

 attempt to explain the evolution of an organ so 

 complex by the action of such a principle as natural 

 selection. Needless to say, the evolutionist's diffi- 

 culty is his opponents' opportunity. Whilst he 

 attempts, by thought and observation and experi- 

 ment, to show how this and that structure may 

 have been evolved, they seek to insist upon the 

 presence of the difficulties — which is unnecessary, 

 since no one denies it — and to declare that they 

 are insoluble — which is to indulge in that "most 

 gratuitous form of human error " called prophecy. 

 Indeed, more and more difficulties are yearly solved, 

 but many yet remain. At this point there begins 

 the latest phase in the struggle between the 

 scientific student of life and those who seek to 

 reconcile his novel conclusions with others which 

 have antiquity, if nothing else, to commend them. 

 The belief in organic evolution is now, as we have 



