Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/69

8 best, to mere modes of the Sole Divine Life, and all their lives to mere effects of its solitary omnipresent causation: —

This discovery, that the leading conceptions of the evolutional philosophy are opposed to the vital conceptions underlying the historical religion of our Western civilisation, of course does not in the least settle the merits of the issue between these conceptions in the court of rational evidence. But the interests at stake touch everything that imparts to human life the highest worth, and all that our past culture has taught us most to value. These interests, it may well be contended, are so great as to justify us in challenging any theory that threatens them. Human nature is not prepared to face despair, until it shall have been proved beyond all question, and after a search entirely exhaustive, that despair must indeed be faced.

Amid all the clamour of the times in extolling evolution, then, it is eminently seasonable to ask, Just how much can the principle of evolution really do? Is it of such reach and such profundity as actually to serve for the explanation of everything known? To state the question more exactly. How far over the fields of being does evolution really go, and with unbroken continuity? Let us try to dis-