THE GENESIS OP NATURE. 



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evolution you have a small modicum of unrevealed cause. 

 Next, take a sufficient series of tliese small effects to produce 

 ou evolutional principles a new genus or family, you have of 

 necessity an equal series of small modicums of cause, whicli 

 taken together add up to an amount of cause sufficient for tlie 

 production of that new genus or family. Xow, take a birdseye 

 view of evolution as a whole ; sum it up in effect, and you 

 find you must not neglect tlie other side of the equation. You 

 nave to answer it an equally large sum of unrevealed cause. 

 The total effect of evolution requires an amount of cause 

 •correspondingly great. And as, on the hypothesis, Evolution 

 ])roduces everything, you are left on the other side with an 

 amount of unrevealed cause, sufficient to produce everything. 

 That is to say the existing facts of nature, taken all together, 

 heing effects, predicate the same amount of originating cause, 

 liy whatever theory their history is explained. 



But it may be objected here, that in working out our problem 

 we have neglected most important factors, which in the eyes of 

 evolutionists have themselves, one or more of them, accounted 

 for the effects. Such are Natural Selection, Sexual Selection, 

 the survival of the fittest, the struggle for existence, corre- 

 spondence to environment, and suchlike. Undoubtedly these 

 questions are most important ; and, in specific steps of 

 evolutionary advance, they do require the utmost consideration 

 and careful w^eight. But yet, if we candidly examine the whole 

 problem, we find that all these terms of it " go out." They are 

 interactions, not self-contained causes. They are viaducts, not 

 fountains of originating force. Whatever potency is in them 

 -comes through them from somewhere else, and in its passage it 

 no more grows than does a river grow ; the apparent growth of 

 which is simply due to the imperceptible addition to it of fresh 

 supplies of that from which it originally took its source, the 

 rain from heaven. And thus all these, and similar explanations 

 of evolution taken together, however subtle, however important, 

 however true, add up (when we are working out the relation of 

 the effects of nature to the original energy that was needed to 

 produce them) to nothing ; and therefore, in spite of them, the 

 existing effects require exactly the same amount of originating 

 •cause, whether evolution and its explanations are brought into, 

 or left out of, consideration. Evolution and its explanatory 

 theories may have much to say on the methods by which the 

 originating causes or their forces work, but with their intrinsic 

 amount tliey have nothing whatever to do. This indeed is, after 

 all. almost a truism ; but it is advisable to be clear about it; 



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