SOME DIFFICUL'lIES OF EVOLUTION. 



89 



chat its eggs should be laid in some living body powerless to harm 

 them, for some entirely inscrutable reason. From birth this wasp 

 surpasses all surgical accuracy in the use of its sting. For in the 

 large caterpillar it operates on, it has to find the exact spot on 

 its back, of incredible minuteness, where injected poison will 

 paralyse all the motor muscles without destroying the life of the 

 animal. No bunghng is of use. The exact spot must always be 

 instinctively known (it is never looked for), so that the caterpillar 

 in its living death becomes the foster-mother of the sphex progeny. 

 There is no evidence of any objection on the part of the cater- 

 pillar. 



8. The necct difficulty is to conceive the gradual evolution by 

 natural selection of most complicated organs that can be of no 

 possible use to the innumerable " linlis " until their formation is 

 complete. Take, for instance, the evolution, according to Darwin, 

 of the eye, or of a feather. 



Imagine the survival of the fittest in countless steps, evolving 

 by degrees a feather. For what possible use is inconceivable, 

 since the evolver has never left the earth, and a feather could not 

 help it to do so. Darwin said the thought of the evolution of the 

 eye (useless till complete) always gave him a cold chill down his 

 back; Bergson plainly declares such evolution impossible. 



Indeed, I do not know of any book by any leading evolutionist 

 that explains how imperfect organs could possibly be evolved iri 

 the interest of the animal, with a steady persistence through cen- 

 turies (?), until at last the long chain of defunct and missini 

 ancestors were rewarded by a distant offspring possessing an eye . 

 This is another stumbling block, that must be overcome if evolu 

 tion is ever to be more than an unworkable hypothesis ; but ot 

 this, there is at pre&ent no sign. 



9. The last difficulty I shall adduce (not with the idea of their 

 number being exhausted, but with a sincere desire not to exhaust 

 my audience) is the plidosophical difficulty of evolving extremely 

 complicated structures out of the simplest for yns by such a chance 

 force as natural selection. 



This difficulty may not strike some as insoluble ; nevertheless, 

 it points out that the theory of evolution runs mainly counter to 

 the usual order in nature — when any proposed evolver is excluded. 



Science, of course, has nothing officially to do with origins or 

 first causes. It only concerns itself with actual facts and results, 

 and their connections. It says " the origin of matter and force 

 are unknowable." Dr. A. E. Wallace, however, is not of this 

 scientific view. He says: " Science demands the knowledge of 

 an intelligent being as the first cause of physical force." 



En modern times Professor Henslow has endowed life with the 

 power of directivity, and there can be no doubt that the Creator 



