PHILOSOPHY AND “ EVOLUTION ” : AN INQUIRY. 141 
he reasoned backwards to see if there were definite limits to 
variation. This conclusion that species may have originated by 
variation from generic types, as varieties have from specific types, 
was a legitimate process of reasoning from the known to the 
unknown. But every step back of that leads into increasing mist 
and darkness and needs to be made with increasing caution. 
Philosophically the reasoning of Darwin involves merely the 
theory of secondary causes, and the extent to which it is possible 
to conceive them to be endowed with resident forces. Theistic 
philosophers generally agree that in the process of creation, God has 
imparted a large extent of inherent power to secondary causes. 
The seed of the original cabbage had the latent power to develop 
into a great variety of forms in response to the varying conditions 
to which it was subjected. The ultimate supposition of Darwin 
was that the Creator had originally endowed four or five forms of 
life with the power of developing into existing species in response 
to the conditions enveloping them. This is not atheistic nor agnostic, 
and should not be confounded with the theories of Haeckel and 
Herbert Spencer. The speaker has done excellent service in showing 
that there were narrower limits to the power of developing by 
resident forces than even Darwin inferred. Life is more than 
motion, and cannot have originated from mere motion. The animal 
has a self-directing power that cannot have come from the 
vegetable’s inherent forces. The spirit of man, with its regard for 
the moral law, is on a higher plane than that of animals. 
Theologians have the same philosophical difficulties to deal with 
in their theories concerning the origin of individual souls, that 
biologists have concerning the origin of species. Theologians are 
divided into two antagonistic camps upon this very point — the 
Traducianists and the Creationists. The Traducianists hold that 
the souls as well as the bodies of Adam’s descendants are derived 
from him ; while the Creationists hold that each soul is a fresh 
creation from the hands of God, put into a body which has been 
propagated from the first through resident forces. It is as difficult, 
on either theory, to tell when the individual man becomes a living, 
responsible soul in the image of his Creator, as it is for a Darwinian 
naturalist to tell when a variety passes into a species. 
The doctrine of design is not discredited by Darwinism as it is 
by the theories of Haeckel and Spencer. The origin of species 
