end, it may make us
remember that the complexity of the problem of specific difference is
hardly less now than it was when Darwin first showed that natural
history is a problem, and no vain riddle.' What is the cause of
variations occurring? What law do they exhibit in their occurrence?
Do variations occur with a certain degree of sudden completeness[15]?
Or how are we to {236} explain the maintenance of variations, which in
a more developed stage are to be very useful, before they can be shown
to be useful at all? What is the place held in evolution by 'natural
selection'? What, if any, the place held by use-inheritance? Is the
factor of 'mimicry,' supported by Darwin, an important or even real
factor in evolution? What is to be the issue of the controversy
between the biologist and the physicist on the question of the time
required for organic development? Are we to suppose that organic
development at the beginning proceeded very much more rapidly than at a
later stage? Or even that it exhibited laws of which we have no
experience now, such as would admit of a 'natural' development of life
out of what is not living? All these, and many more questions, appear
to be so completely open that, granted the general theory of continuous
evolution as against special creation, hardly anything as regards the
factors or causes of evolution can be said to be scientifically
settled. Thus on such subjects as the origin of the human race, its
exact relation to an animal ancestry, and the right interpretation of
the fact of sin, {237} before science can make demands on theology,
there must be more agreement in her own camp.

[1] See especially Ezekiel xxviii, xxxi.

[2] See vol. i. p. 193.

[3] Clem. Alex. _Strom_, vi. 12. 96; Iren. _c. Haer._ iv. 38.

[4] See also above, vol. i. pp. 78, 79.

[5] On the meaning of 'freedom of will,' see vol. i. pp. 230 ff.

[6] See above, vol. i. pp. 80-1.

[7] Romanes, _Examination of Weismannism_ (Longmans, 1893), pp. 61-70,
153.

[8] _The Last Link_ (Black, 1899), p. 79.

[9] Romanes, _Darwin and after Darwin_ (Longmans, 1895), ii. p. 279.

[10] _Examination of Weismannism_, pp. 114, 115.

[11] _Darwin and after Darwin_, ii. p. 90.

[12] See also in Haeckel, _Last Link_, p. 148: 'We assume the single
monophyletic origin of mankind at one place, in one district'; and
passages cited above, vol. i. p. 196, n. 1. The science of comparative
religions also suggests the same