36 
tion shall resemble that which preceded it, another class of 
causes, from generation to generation, may gradually modify 
this resemblance, and, it must be observed (for this is 
absolutely necessary to the theory), modify it continuously 
in the direction of evolution, and also in such a manner 
that the new types produced through these modifica- 
tions shall be each of them a distinct integration. For the 
theory is, that the result of the process is the present highly- 
developed and accurately- defined contemporaneous order of 
the organic world. 
28. The question at issue, we must remember, is not whether 
the process through which this order has been established 
followed the law of evolution, — as much as this might, I think, 
be inferred from the characteristics of Divine and Reason- 
able order, and is, indeed, indicated by Revelation itself in 
the Scriptural account of creation, — but whether the causes 
of the process can be traced in Nature itself. And even if there 
should be reason to suppose that the order of Nature has been 
determined, to a large extent, by conditions such as those which 
Mr. Darwin and his school consider sufficient, the question would 
still remain, — Whence does living matter derive the extra- 
ordinary power of adapting its forms to these several conditions, 
and especially of so directing all the successive infinitesimal 
modifications produced by environments, that by these modi- 
fications alone the whole of the order could be evolved. The 
evolution of the Ascidian from the Moner is, in fact, more un- 
intelligible, than that changes should be produced in the higher 
orders of animals, unless some unknown power, such as that by 
which the embryo grows in the womb, should have been the 
cause of the development. For, however environments may 
aid development, and the law of evolution may limit it, they 
can effect nothing whatever of themselves. I have elsewhere * 
suggested that the analogy of embryology itself points to the 
probability of a period of genesis of Nature, during which other 
powers were in operation than those which we can trace in 
Nature in the present condition of the earth. But, indeed, not- 
withstanding Professor Huxley^s late very positive assertion f 
that it is impossible for the scientific mind any longer to 
question the sufficiency of known causes for the evolution of 
organic forms, the evidences of continuous progress in the 
direction of evolution (which certainly the hoof of the horse and 
other cases to which he refers are not), are at present so de- 
* Church Quarterly Review , July, 1878, on Evolution. 
t In a lecture delivered at the Royal Institution last March, entitled 
“ The Coming of Age of the Origin of Species.” 
