inclinations sway the whole body. From time to time arise critical situations, battles, delicate negotiations, internal disturbances, in which the slightest incidents may change the course of history. A rainy day may hinder a forced march, and change the course of a campaign; a few injudicious words in a despatch may irritate the national pride; the accidental discharge of a gun may precipitate a collision the effects of which will last for centuries. It is said that the history of Europe depended at one moment upon the question whether the look-out man upon Nelson’s vessel would or would not descry a ship of Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt which was passing not far off. In human affairs, then, the smallest causes may produce the greatest effects, and the real application of scientific method is out of the question.
The Theory of Evolution.
Profound philosophers have lately generalised concerning the production of living forms and the mental and moral phenomena regarded as their highest development. Herbert Spencer’s theory of evolution purports to explain the origin of all specific differences, so that not even the rise of a Homer or a Beethoven would escape from his broad theories. The homogeneous is unstable and must differentiate itself, says Spencer, and hence comes the variety of human institutions and characters. In order that a living form shall continue to exist and propagate its kind, says Darwin, it must be suitable to its circumstances, and the most suitable forms will prevail over and extirpate those which are less suitable. From these fruitful ideas are developed theories of evolution and natural selection which go far towards accounting for the existence of immense numbers of living creatures—plants, and animals. Apparent adaptations of organs to useful purposes, which Paley regarded as distinct products of creative intelligence, are now seen to follow as natural effects of a constantly acting tendency. Even man, according to these theories, is no distinct creation, but rather an extreme case of brain development. His nearest cousins are the apes, and his pedigree extends backwards until it joins that of the lowliest zoophytes.
The theories of Darwin and Spencer are doubtless not demonstrated; they are to some extent hypothetical, just as all the theories of physical science are to some extent hypothetical, and open to doubt. Judging from the immense numbers of diverse facts which they harmonise and explain, I venture to look upon the theories of evolution and natural selection in their main features as two of the most probable hypotheses ever proposed. I question whether any scientific works which have appeared since the Principia of Newton are comparable in importance with those of Darwin and Spencer, revolutionising as they do all our views of the origin of bodily, mental, moral, and social phenomena.
Granting all this, I cannot for a moment admit that the theory of evolution will destroy theology. That theory embraces several laws or uniformities which are observed to be true in the production of living forms; but these laws do not determine the size and figure of living creatures, any more than the law of gravitation determines the magnitudes and distances of the planets. Suppose that Darwin is correct in saying that man is descended from the Ascidians: yet the precise form of the human body must have been influenced by an infinite train of circumstances affecting the reproduction, growth, and health of the whole chain of intermediate beings. No doubt, the circumstances being what they were, man could not be otherwise than he is, and if in any other part of the universe an exactly similar earth, furnished with exactly similar germs of life, existed, a race must have grown up there exactly similar to the human race.
By a different distribution of atoms in the primeval world a different series of living forms on this earth would have been produced. From the same causes acting according to the same laws, the same results will