SOME COMMON ERRORS CONSIDERED 97 



point of fact, " natural selection " — to use Darwin's 

 phrase — is almost daily found to be more certainly 

 and more widely expressive of a truth, and this 

 circumstance naturally tends towards the persistence 

 of the error in question ; but it nevertheless behoves 

 us clearly to understand that the theory of organic 

 evolution does not make any assertion whatever 

 as to the manner in which the process has been 

 and is being effected, and is independent of any 

 such assertion. The truth of the theory is not 

 involved in the truth of the Darwinian elucidation 

 of a certain mode of evolutionary action. Were 

 natural selection proved to be a fiction to-morrow, 

 we should still hold, as firmly as ever, to the theory 

 of organic evolution, not only because there is none 

 other in the field, but also because we are in pos- 

 session of innumerable facts which consort with 

 the theory, whilst we are unacquainted, either 

 through our own inquiries or those of our oppo- 

 nents, with any one fact which is incompatible with 

 the theory. The astronomer is possessed, mainly 

 through the labours of Newton, of evidence that 

 there is a universal " force " called gravitation. At 

 present he has no decided notions as to the manner 

 in which gravitational attraction is effected, and 

 indeed he may well have to wait many years for 

 the desired explanation. Meanwhile he will very 

 properly continue to assert the existence of a 

 process which he expressly declares that he can- 

 not explain. The analogy must not be press* :1 

 too far. Evolution acts in many ways, gravitation 

 probabty in only one, but the man who explains 

 tho modus operandi of gravitation will properly bq 



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