168 REV. G. F. WH'DBORNE, M.A., ON QUESTIONS INVOLVED 
of almost limitless development, and (3) that its origin 
has hitherto been utterly unexplained. But short of this 
it is possible to hold the doctrine in many less degrees, 
until we come down to that which at all events is 
a fact of common knowledge—-the production under human 
agency of quasi-permanent varieties within a species. If 
this last be called evolution, we must all perforce be 
evolutionists! But the climbing of a molehill does not 
guarantee the ascent of Mount Blanc. There is no slight 
difference between this minimum and the maximum of the 
theory; and the question is how far from the minimum to 
the maximum we are led by Nature. Whether the chain of 
life is one and unbroken throughout, or is composed after all 
of various series which though corresponding in character 
are distinct from each other ;—whether in short the fragmen- 
tary groups of links which scientific research has joined 
together betoken one single gigantic chain, or only a greater 
or less number of short independent chains, 1s a problem 
which requires not hypotheses, but actual facts, for its 
satisfactory solution. 
3. Now, it is hard to know what is really to be understood 
by the word “ Evolution.” There is a danger that its accep- 
tance as a term for a principle de minimis unconsciously 
entails its acceptance as the assertion of a fact de mawimis. 
It is a convenient word, a clear expression—so convenient 
and so clear that it fits on at once, and accurately, to several 
deep and different ideas, and is in fact commonly and 
logically used for most of them; and itis by no means 
certain whether thereby much is not frequently taken for 
granted, which, if each separate idea could be expressed by 
a separate word, would be found to require elaborate proof. 
Perhaps in this paper it may be permitted to use the word 
“Evolution” for the process in the abstract; to call the 
extreme historical form of the theory “extreme evolution ” ; 
and to call its less extreme forms “ partial evolution.” This 
may I fear be clumsy, and perhaps ineffective; but I do 
not myself happen to know terms which distinguish these 
distinct and different meanings of the word, the confusion of 
which can only be confusing. 
4, To my own mind Extreme Evolution is not a question 
affecting religious faith ; and that for this following reason— 
that it is so utterly impossible that it could have been the 
lifeshistory of existing nature, except it was altogether under 
the guidance of a governing power outside itself, that it 
