6 EVOLUTION AND THE 
being were miraculously kept alive to witness this 
change, he surely would soon cease to believe in any 
uniformity, the uniformity itself no longer existing.” 
It is true that in earlier times no absolute belief in 
the uniformity of nature existed, even amongst the 
select few. The Greek philosophers, including Aris- 
totle, recognised ‘chance’ and ‘spontaneity’ as find-" 
ing a definite place in Nature, and to this extent they 
were not sure that the future would resemble the past. 
But as we have become more familiar with a wider 
range of natural phenomena and with their mutual 
relations or order of appearance, so has the conception 
of chance or spontaneity disappeared from the scien- 
tific horizon—driven out of the field by the steady 
advance of Law and Order. Those who embrace the 
Evolution Philosophy are foremost in this opinion— 
they believe that no effects of whatsoever kind can 
occur without adequate causes, and, the conditions 
being similar, that the same results will alway follow 
the action of any given cause. Their whole creed is, 
in fact, pre-eminently based upon an assumed Uni- 
formity of Nature. 
he present is essentially a time of transition in. 
matters of opinion. Men who have been educated in. 
one system of scientific beliefs are gradually being 
converted to another, because the new system is 
