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REV. G. F. WHIDBORNE^ M.A., P.G.S.^ ON 



ask " what is life ? what is the scientific explanation of its 

 essence and origin ? " we have asked a question, which human 

 knowledge cannot answer, and of which curious philosophic 

 definitions and ingenious scientific explanations are nothing 

 but dignified paraphrases for " we cannot tell." But yet as we 

 meet these multiform facts of nature, these effects, profuse and 

 world-long, each one of them has in turn just this one question 

 to ask of us, " Is there not a cause ? " And to its question it 

 takes no loose reply. Known or unknown, some primal cause 

 for each effect must be. 



4. Cause must he adequate for effects. 

 Further, not only must these effects be due to cause, but 

 cause must be adequate for the whole of the effects. Advance, 

 produced by the interaction of correspondences, does not 

 obliterate the need of a sufficient cause behind. Grant, if you 

 will have it so, that the giraffe's neck grew because it wanted 

 to feed upon high trees ! It only grew because it was able to 

 grow. That is, there was a potency, an efficient cause within, 

 which gave it power to correspond to its environment. The 

 measure of that efficient cause was not the original short- 

 necked creature, but the longest-necked giraffe that was 

 produced by circumstances. The sum of the causes that 

 produced first the short-necked creature, and then the giraffe 

 from the short-necked creature, is the same, neither more or 

 less, as the amount of cause required to produce the giraffe 

 instanter. Or again, the ordinary growth of any creature to 

 maturity from the embryo must have a sufficient cause. That 

 cause is not hard to find. It is given, at once, by the 

 antecedent paternal form existing in its maturity. The young 

 growls up to the state of its parent, just as water finds its own 

 level. Thus far, and no further, the effect has found a sufficient 

 cause. But sometimes the young, as it reaches maturity, goes 

 a little further than its parent, is a little finer,, better, more 

 advanced. Where is the cause for this effect " Not in the 

 state of the parent itself, not in the amount of force put forth, 

 'per se, in the proximate progenitor. Here is a modicum of effect 

 which has not found a cause. But the cause must exist. The 

 smallest modicum of effect cannot be causeless ; the cause must 

 be somewhere behind, somewhere in pre-existing force that has 

 not been revealed in the parent, and yet potentially exists. 

 Now let us, for the purpose of the present argument, assume the 

 truth of the Evolutionary Theory to its fullest extent. Call 

 this small modicum of effect " evolution," and to account for this 



