PHILOSOPHY AND “ EVOLUTION " : AN INQUIRY. 137 
“ several phases of Creative thought realised ; ”* Divine volition 
expressing itself in working for ends , as implied in the repeated 
formula “ God was saying.” In this we recognise the immanence of 
creative power, ever directing the variations, which in their totality 
lead to cumulative results. 
I meet, therefore, the thrust of the hinder end of Abner’s spear, 
by a flat denial of the “ hopeless conflict ” there enunciated ; 
and I do so with the more confidence, when, on turning to a 
previous page, I observe the crudeness of the author’s notions of 
Chemical Science. He seems to he oblivious of Crookes’ “fourth 
state of matter,” of the Periodic Law (as worked out by Mendeleeff) 
and of the electron theory of atoms, as suggested by Professor J. J. 
Thomson, of Cambridge, and expounded by Sir Oliver Lodge in his 
Romanes Lecture at Oxford. These have given a new departure, and 
have opened wide fields for the legitimate extension of the evolution- 
theory in Chemical Philosophy ; so that it is too late in the day to 
quote the dictum of Clerk-Maxwell (though he was not the 
author of it) that “ the material atoms bear all the stamp of a 
manufactured article.” No student at all abreast of chemical science 
in this twentieth century could assent to that; and it “proves,” 
therefore, nothing at all. Has Professor Orchard heard nothing of 
recent work on the “ atom ” of copper in Sir William Ramsay’s 
laboratory at University College, or his brilliant work on the 
resolution of Radium If So with the “ New Geology,” Professor 
Orchard can scarcely be said to be up to date ; and he labours under 
the fallacy, to which Herbert Spencer had to confess in his old 
age, of using the term “ force ” as synonymous with “ energy.” 
He might, I think, have recognised Professor George Hen slow’s 
insistence on the necessity of directivity in a lecture which I heard 
at University College! five years ago, upon which Lord Kelvin based 
the remarks which he quotes ; and he seems to be unacquainted with 
the writings of Dr. Asa Gray, one of the most profound thinkers on 
* See The Guardian, October 30th, 1907 ; also the correspondence that 
followed for some weeks. 
t See Professor Ramsay’s communication to Nature, vol. lxxvii, March 
5th, 1908, as indicating the latest phase that this question has assumed 
(March 11th). 
t See Christian Apologetics. London : John Murray, 1903. 
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