SCIENTIFIC FAITH ONCE MORE 



and half supernatural? Must it not be entirely one 

 or the other to be a wmVerse? Is it any easier to 

 believe that God planted the germs of evolution in a 

 few forms, created out of hand, so to speak, than it 

 is to believe that He kindled the evolutionary im- 

 pulse in matter itself? If we believe that one species 

 was brought into being by a special act of creative 

 energy, are we not bound to believe that all species 

 were? It is the old story of our fathers: that the 

 Creator is active in nature at certain times and 

 places, and is passive at others. The processes of 

 creation being miraculously started, they then con- 

 tinue under the guidance of natural law. 



This break in Darwin's scientific faith does not at 

 all detract from the immense value of his work. I 

 only point to it as showing how diflScult it was for 

 even his mind to commit itself unreservedly to the 

 full guidance of natural science. Tyndall, whose 

 scientific faith was more consistent, saw the "prom- 

 ise and the potency" of all terrestrial life in matter 

 itself, but he wrote matter with a big M, and de- 

 clared that at bottom it was essentially mysterious 

 and transcendental; and Bruno, in declaring that 

 matter was the mother of us all, brought the Crea- 

 tor near us in the same way. Such views simply 

 show the creative energy as always immanent in the 

 imiverse. They free our minds of the notion that 

 creation is a miracle at one end, and ordinary devel- 

 opment at the other; that a primary cause sets the 

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