00000158.htm

EVOLUTION AND CREATION 147

formulates the idea that the present phase of being
is the natural and necessary outcome of a previous,
on the whole, simpler phase of being, and so on,
backwards and forwards in time, under the operation
of more or less clearly discernible natural factors and
conditions—notably variation and heredity, selection
and isolation. Tested a thousand times, the general
evolution-formula seems to cover the facts, it gives
them a new rationality, it applies to minutiose details
as well as to the general progress of life, it even
affords a basis for verified prophecy. The formula
is a key that fits ail locks, though it has not yet,
because of our fumbling fingers, opened all.

But just here, as Spencer pointed out, there is a
parting of the ways, and there is no via media, no
compromise. Is there no hopefulness in trying to
give a scientific account of the nature and history and
genesis of the confessedly vast and perplexing orders
of facts which we call Physical Nature, Animate
Nature, and Human Nature ?—then let us become
agnostics pure and simple, or let us remain philo-
sophers or theologians, poets or artists, and sigh over
an impetuous science which started so much in debt
that its bankruptcy was a foregone conclusion!

On the other hand, if the scientific attempt at
interpretation is legitimate, and if it has already made
good progress (considering its youth), and if its
results, achieved piecemeal, always make for greater
intelligibility, then let us give the scientific, i.e.,
evolutionist formulation its due; let us rigidly ex-
clude from our science all other than scientific inter-
pretations ; let us cease from juggling with words in
attempting a mongrel mixture of scientific and trans-



	EVOLUTION AND CREATION 147 formulates the idea that the present phase of being is the natural and necessary outcome of a previous, on the whole, simpler phase of being, and so on, backwards and forwards in time, under the operation of more or less clearly discernible natural factors and conditions—notably variation and heredity, selection and isolation. Tested a thousand times, the general evolution-formula seems to cover the facts, it gives them a new rationality, it applies to minutiose details as well as to the general progress of life, it even affords a basis for verified prophecy. The formula is a key that fits ail locks, though it has not yet, because of our fumbling fingers, opened all. But just here, as Spencer pointed out, there is a parting of the ways, and there is no via media, no compromise. Is there no hopefulness in trying to give a scientific account of the nature and history and genesis of the confessedly vast and perplexing orders of facts which we call Physical Nature, Animate Nature, and Human Nature ?—then let us become agnostics pure and simple, or let us remain philo- sophers or theologians, poets or artists, and sigh over an impetuous science which started so much in debt that its bankruptcy was a foregone conclusion! On the other hand, if the scientific attempt at interpretation is legitimate, and if it has already made good progress (considering its youth), and if its results, achieved piecemeal, always make for greater intelligibility, then let us give the scientific, i.e., evolutionist formulation its due; let us rigidly ex- clude from our science all other than scientific inter- pretations ; let us cease from juggling with words in attempting a mongrel mixture of scientific and trans-