So Nature may be material, but
it is material interpenetrated by the divine; if you call it a
fabric, the woof may be material but the warp is God. This view
contains all the truth of materialism and pantheism, and vastly
more than they, and it avoids their errors and omissions.
To the old metaphysical hypothesis of evolution Mr. Darwin gave a
scientific basis. It had always been admitted that species were
capable of slight variation and that this divergence might become
hereditary and thus perhaps give rise to a variety of the parent
species. But it was denied that the variation could go on increasing
indefinitely, it seemed soon to reach a limit and stop. Early in the
present century Lamarck had attempted to prove that by the use and
disuse of organs through a series of generations a great divergence
might arise resulting in new species. But the theory was crude,
capable at best of but limited application, and fell before the
arguments and authority of Cuvier. The times were not ripe for such
a theory. Some fifty years later, Mr. Darwin called attention to the
struggle for existence as a means of aggregating these slight
modifications in a divergence sufficient to produce new species,
genera, or families. His argument may be very briefly stated as
follows:
1. There is in Nature a law of heredity; like begets like.
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