PHILOSOPHY AND “ EVOLUTION ” : AN INQUIRY. 123 
cedent. If the evolutionist thinks to bridge over difficulty by 
assuming a past eternity for force as well as for matter, he may 
be reminded that force is not an entity, but exists only as the 
action of spirit. Hence, the supposed dual origin — matter and 
force — is found to be triple, namely, matter, force, and spirit. 
Thus, even the hypothesis of evolution must logically recognise 
Spirit as the ultimate Origin of all things ; or the “ theistic ”* 
is the only evolution theory which supplies any intelligible 
account of origin. 
Emil du Bois-Peymond’s Seven World- Problems. — Emil du Bois- 
Beymond propounded! - in 1880, the famous “ Seven World- 
Problems ” which, from that' time to the present, have received 
no true solution from evolutionists. These “ seven great 
enigmas” are: — (1) The nature of matter and of force; (2) The 
origin of motion ; (3) The origin of life ; (4) The manifest 
proofs of design in nature; (5) The origin of simple sensation 
and consciousness ; (6) Logical thinking and the origin of 
language; (7) The freedom of the will. “Believe in God, and 
all these problems are readily solved. Ignore the Creator, and 
the demands made on your credulity are numerous and some of 
them stupendous.” The truth of this is illustrated by Haeckel’s 
attempted reply. He would evade the difficulties connected 
with matter, force, motion, consciousness, and sensation by the 
easy assumption that they are forms or qualities of a something 
called “ substance,” supposed to have had no beginning, but to 
have existed from all eternity, and that therefore further 
investigation is superfluous. The origin of life, design in nature, 
logical thinking and language, are, he says, “ decisively answered 
by our modern theory of evolution.” Life is imagined to be 
■explained by “ cellular physiology ,”+ cells being supposed 
•endowed with souls. Design in nature is complacently shelved 
in favour of Darwin’s principle of “ Natural Selection.” Logical 
thinking and language have resulted, through adaptation and 
heredity, from “ psychic reflex activity,” carried on into the 
further stages of the instincts, intelligence, and definite sounds, 
of the lower animals. 
* Even the “theistic” system (though less irrational than the 
agnostic and the atheistic) is in hopeless conflict with the Divine record 
in Genesis, and with the testimonies of our intuitions and our experience, 
f In the Leibnitz session of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. 
\ Sir Oliver Lodge, however, draws attention to the fact that Life 
is a something which “ can exercise guidance and control ” over these cells. 
{Life and Matter.') 
