THE PRE-REQUISITES OF A CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 227 



not confessionally, I mean, but intellectually. From what has 

 been said it should now appear that the Argument from Design, 

 or (to give it its positive character) the Doctrine of Design, 

 needs such restatement. 



For consider how the whole intellectual situation is trans- 

 formed, even if we try to meet unbelieving Evolutionism with 

 a direct attack. I do not refer to controversy that is primarily 

 scientific. This must be unsatisfying, for, as I have tried to 

 show. Evolutionism is more than a scientific theory.* But if we 

 tackle it, as we ought to do, on the basis of its major premiss — 

 its application — we shall find that we are plunged into the 

 heart of Philosophy — that we are led into regions where, having 

 gone so far, v/e cannot hold back without an arbitrary arrest of 

 thought. 



This is not to say that we have not a strong and clear 

 position. Let us take stock of it as briefly as possible. We 

 can reply that, whatever Science has or has not proved, it 

 cannot in any case account, either for the origin of variations at 

 large, or for the broad fact of a mutually adaptive universe. 

 We can thus take our stand upon order, as an essential aspect 

 of the universe : we can maintain that rationality is implied in 

 a state of things that has issued in the production of rational 

 beings, and that responds to their interpretative efforts. We 

 can assert that " mechanism," the very term that is used against 

 Teleology, implies a mind behind it and a purpose in front. But 

 our reply is different from that which prevailed against the old 

 materiahsts. The old Design Argument was essentially cumula- 

 tive. It dealt with the contrivances of Nature as separate 

 events. Evolutionism reduced them all to one principle : in 

 the hands of the materialist it was aimed at the major rather 

 than the minor premiss of the Design argument. Apparent 

 designs might be piled mountains high upon one another by the 

 teleologist. It made no difference : the facts belonged to both 

 theories alike ; they were indeed all one great fact. The evolu- 

 tionist could go even further than the old-fashioned theist, on 

 the theist's own principles : he could demand order and coherence, 

 so bridging all possible interstices that the separate instances 



* " That the different species were bred one from the other is not merely 

 a deduction based on a few facts, for facts can be either disputed or 

 interpreted differently, but a conception which imposes itself on our mind 

 as the only acceptable one, as soon as we reject the doctrine of a super- 

 natural act of creation." Delage and Goldsmith, T/ie Theories of Evolution^ 

 p. 8. 



