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50 ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



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elsewhere. But if they postulate a conscious 

 directive agency which merely happens to prefer 

 this very roundabout and relatively inhumane method 

 of gaining its ends, why need they accept any of 

 the explanations we offer ? Granted that evolution 

 has occurred, and is occurring, why trouble to 

 recognise the action of natural law at any point 

 if a Divine Will is to be postulated elsewhere ? 

 Why not allow the Divine Will to have the whole 

 field to itself? Or if, on the other hand, the}' will 

 maintain the truly philosophic view that natural 

 selection, for instance, being a law of Nature, is a law 

 of Nature's God, why not admit that other laws of 

 Nature may acccount for the facts unaccounted for 

 by the particular law which they do recognise ? If 

 natural selection be a law of Nature's God, why 

 should He require to supplement its action by His 

 own immediate volition ? Why should He not have 

 promulgated enough laws to do all the work ? l 



In point of fact, there is not to be found any 

 biologist of note who is concerned to discover any 

 hitherto "unknown" factor in organic evolution. 

 On the contrary, it is more apparent every day 

 that the factors with which we are already ac- 

 quainted will prove amply sufficient for the ex- 

 planation of all the facts. So far are those com- 

 petent to judge from seeking any factor hitherto 

 unrecognised, that the only outstanding question 

 is whether certain of the alleged factors are not 

 superfluously invoked to explain facts which are 

 more easily explained without their assistance. 



1 The above must not be taken as implying any assent of mine 

 to certain of its assumptions. My business has merely been to 

 show the unphilo.-ophic character of the position stated. 



