124 PROF. H. LANGHORNE ORCHARD, M.A., B.SC., ON 
With regard to the seventh great enigma — freewill, Haeckel 
conveniently disposes of all difficulty by asserting* * * § that our 
belief that we are free is an illusion begotten of our arrogance 
and presumption. He considers will to be a universal property 
of living protoplasm, but to be unconscious in the lower animals. 
Man’s inclination is said to bet determined by heredity, and 
the way in which he acts in any given instance is determined, 
as an “ adaptation to the circumstances of the moment,” by the 
“ strongest motive.” Such are the answers, I will not call them 
solutions, made bj r atheistic evolutionists to the Seven World- 
Problems. 
2. Docs evolution explain facts ? — Is evolution more successful 
in answering the How and the Why than in answering the 
Whence 1 Can evolution explain facts ? According to the 
admissions of ardent evolutionists, it cannot explain all. 
Evolutionist Admissions. — Some would restrict the empire 
of the “ law ” to the inorganic kingdom ; others (with Wilson) 
confess that this limit even is too wide. Speaking of water 
and its unique and unchangeable properties, Wilson says,+ “ Ho 
one imagines that water is an evolved product ...” As 
to life, consciousness, sensation, and man’s intellectual and moral 
qualities, a large consensus of evolutionist opinion agrees with 
Eussel Wallace that no evolution conjecture is able to explain 
them. But what sort of philosophy is that which is thus 
abandoned by its supporters ? 
Evohdionist Affirmations. — The theory professes to explain 
body, soul, and spirit ; and hold the mirror to their development. 
It affirms that the organic has come from the inorganic, and 
then species from other species by (a) direct generation, or ( b ) 
transmutation ; the inorganic itself deriving its various forms 
through the action, long continued, of mechanical force upon 
what was originally quite simple homogeneous matter, probably 
in a nebulous condition. 
The hypothesis of Simple Homogeneous Matter. — If we inquire 
as to the How, the explanation is itself nebulous. Although 
this simple homogeneous matter is not met with in nature, except 
in connection with other matter, or as result of decomposition,^ 
* With H. Spencer. 
t The Riddle of the Universe , p. 47. 
I Problems of Religion and Science , p. 105. 
§ The spectroscope shows that the nebulae are not constituted of 
simple homogeneous matter. Lockyer’s investigations do not go to prove- 
that the stars were formed out of only one kind of matter, but merely 
that the number of elements is less than had been supposed. 
