358 THE WORLD OF LIFE 



whole series of living things, but also in their final outcome, 

 to serve the purposes and add to the enjoyments of man, is 

 highly distasteful to a large proportion of scientific workers. 

 They think, and some of them say, that it is a return to the 

 old superstition of special creation, that science has nothing 

 to do with first causes, whether in the form of spiritual or 

 divine agencies, and that once we begin to call in the aid of 

 such non-natural and altogether hypothetical powers we may 

 as well give up science altogether. In my early life I should 

 have adopted these same arguments as entirely valid, and 

 should perhaps have thought of the advocates of my present 

 views with the same contemptuous pity which they now be- 

 stow upon myself. But, I venture to urge, the cases are not 

 fairly comparable, because both their point of view and my 

 own are very different from those of our fellow-workers of the 

 first half of the nineteenth century. 



Let me recall the conditions that prevailed then as compared 

 with those of to-day. Then the opposition was between science 

 and religion, or, perhaps more correctly, between the enthusias- 

 tic students of the facts and theories of physical science in the 

 full tide of its efforts to penetrate the inmost secrets of nature, 

 and the more or less ignorant adherents of dogmatic theology. 

 ]N^ow, the case is wholly different. Speaking for myself I 

 claim to be as whole-heartedly devoted to modern science as 

 any of my critics. I am as fully imbued with the teachings 

 of evolution as they can be ; and I still uphold, as I have al- 

 ways done, the essential teachings of Darwinism. 



Darwin always admitted, and even urged, that " Xatural 

 Selection has been the most important but not the exclusive 

 means of modification." He always adduced the " laws of 

 Growth with Reproduction," and of " Inheritance with Varia- 

 bility," as being fundamental facts of nature, without which 

 Natural Selection would be powerless or even non-existent, 

 and which, then as now, were and are wholly beyond explana- 

 tion or even comprehension. He elaborated his theory of 

 Panagenesis for the purpose of rendering the many strange 



