222 G. MACLOSKIE, U.SC, ETC., ON COMMON ERRORS 



devastating:; floods over many lands, with nmcli, if not 

 universal, destruction of hnniau life, is Avhat geologists 

 know to have actually occurred. We do not advance this 

 view as tlic correct exegesis of the record in Scripture, but 

 submit it for verification. 



7. The conflict has now sliifted fi'oni Geology to Biology, 

 and specially to the question of the origin of species, and 

 still more directly to that of the origin of man. The various 

 terms, Evolution. Development, Darwinism, are, according to 

 the nsus loquendi of the scientific world, synonymous at 

 least when applied to the organic world ; all of them just 

 indicating the actual derivation in some way or other of 

 distinct s})ecies irom ('ommon ancestors. The term Natural 

 Selection further suggests that the forces causing the produc- 

 tion of new species are chiefl.y external, that in the struggle 

 for existence they represent the influence of the environment. 

 The name of Neo-Txtmarckians is now applied to those who, 

 believing equally Avith the selectionists in evolution, regard 

 the forces as chiefly or largely internal, the organism itself 

 when acted on by the environment responding by appropriate 

 changes of its own structure. None of these views involves 

 any assumption either for or against the supreme control of 

 the Divine Behag over the process of evolution, and over the 

 environment and the movements of the organism. An 

 evolutionist may, if he choose, say that it is all nature and 

 nothing more ; another may say that nature is only a name 

 for God's mode of directing or eftecting changes. 



Candid thinkers may be led to condenm this theory. An 

 eminent British physicist is astonished at the " coolness of 

 assumption with which mere speculations are spoken of as if 

 they Avere established truths." His criticism is thus far justi- 

 fied — in that many praise evolution as if it unlocked all the 

 secrets of the organic Avorld, and yet no well-grounded 

 theory of its rationale or its limitations has been reached. 

 Neither natural selection nor Neo-Lamarckism goes back to 

 the real origin of A^ariations, a point which is yet uidcnoAvn ; 

 they are rather like interference in athletics, Avhicli may 

 secure a clear field for the movements of variations otherAvise 

 initiated. ^o far, established eA'olution is only empirically 

 true, and ought not to be appliedtoo widely in a deductive way. 

 Nevertheless one may be biased against it by one's mental 

 habit as a physicist, accustomed to mathematical, or at l(?ast 

 experimental, evidence. Such cA'idence is rarely accessible 

 in Biology, as it is inaecessil)le in sociology and polities and 



