The Doctrine of Evolution: Its Data, Its Principles, Its Speculations, and Its Theistic Bearings (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Doctrine of Evolution: Its Data, Its Principles, Its Speculations, and Its Theistic Bearings

Should the reader demand categorically whether the author holds to the doctrine of evolution or not, he replies, that this seems clearly the law of universal intelligence under which complex results are brought into existence. The existence and universality of a law operating upon materials so various, and under circumstances so diverse, but always evolving a suc cession of terms having the same values relatively to each other, is a fact which, to the ear of reason, pro claims intelligence more loudly than any possible ar ray of isolated phenomena. But the diversity of the materials with which the law has to deal brings out a variety of special values for the general terms of the evolutionary series. Mechanical force acts with uniformity, symmetry, and always in one direction, producing results congeneric with itself; hence, in the world of mechanical force, the series are complete, calculable, and demonstrative. Or, if we penetrate to the rational element of all force, intelligent will, we should say that its self-imposed mode of activity in the mechanical world is one producing series which are complete, calculable, demonstrative. But obvi ously other modes of activity are possible and proba ble to intelligent will. When acting in the organic.

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