Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/57

 aptitude to aggregate into the form of that body, what need is there of a Creator from whom such aptitude may be derived extrinsically? Evolution therefore by the very principles upon which it is based forbids those so-called accommodations of it.

It can not be urged that God created a few simple forms, and then developed the higher from these by the process of Evolution, for the claims of Evolution itself prevent the possibility of such a commencement. Nor can the theory of Evolution be reconciled by complementing the "struggle for life" with a second factor, the "struggle for the life of others," as Drummond attempts in his Ascent of Man. The difficulty is further back than this. A careful consideration of the theories of Evolution in their varied forms, will disclose the fact that Evolution alone in its unqualified form is in any degree consistent with itself. It really meets with less difficulty, and is, from a scientific standpoint, at once seen as the most plausible. Its modified forms adopted to bridge difficulties only make wider chasms, and introduce greater perplexities.

I am well aware that in the minds of some, who have been pleased with certain presentations of evolutionary thought, will arise the objection that, in dealing with Evolution in general, I