application of Darwin's great idea as expressed by Herbert Spencer." But
let that pass. In another place the author makes it clear that the
explanations of to-day, including his own, do _not_ exhaust the subject,
for he says "it is incumbent on us to discover the _cause_ of the
orderly origin of every character. The nature of such a law we cannot
even dream of at present, for the causes of the majority of vertebrate
adaptations remain wholly unknown." In any case we must account for
Natural Selection; for if it is a Law--as some doubt--it must have had a
Lawgiver. The watch must have been an Idea in some one's mind before it
became an accomplished fact, and Natural Selection or any other "Law of
Nature" must--unless all reason is nonsense and all nonsense
reason--also have been an Idea before it became a factor. Whose Idea?
Our author does not help us to answer this question. On the contrary--he
tries to set an unclimbable fence in the way of any answer by telling
us, though without any convincing argument to support his statement,
that we may "exclude the possibility that it" [the internal moving
principle] "acts either through supernatural or teleological
interposition through an externally creative power." But though he
refuses to allow us to look in this direction for a solution of our
difficulties, it must be confessed that he does not help us with any
other answer satisfying the question of the origin and evolution of
Life.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 36: _The Origin and Evolution of Life; or, the Theory
of Action, Reaction, and Interaction of Energy._ By F. H.
Osborn. (G. Bell & Sons.)]

[Footnote 37: By _entelechy_--an Aristotelian term
re-introduced by Driesch--is meant an agency other than one of
a purely chemico-physical character, which differentiates
living from not-living substance, and is responsible for the
phenomenon of life.]

* * * * *

INDEX OF NAMES

Agassiz, 142

Allen, Grant, 85

Aquinas, St. Thomas, 60, 147, 153

Austen, Miss, 32

Avicenna, 153

Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J., 116

Bassi, Laura, 155

Bateson, W., F.R.S., 4, 7, 11, 118, 150

Bax, Belfort, 37

Benson, Mgr., 84, 88, 94, 101

Bergson, 151, 166

Bernhardi, 20

Borden, Sir Robert, 122

Branco, 162

Buffon, 100

Butler, Samuel 44, 61

Chesterton, G. K., 113

Clodd, E., 86

Conklyn, 23

Cowper, 37

Crichton-Browne, 20

Cuvier, 142

Darwin, 116,