SCIENTIFIC FAITH ONCE MORE 
and half supernatural? Must it not be entirely one 
or the other to be a universe? 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 difficult 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 
universe. 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 
165 
