le, and can only say, 'Here is
a puzzle yet unsolved.' Nor can the most religious scientific man be
blamed as undutiful to religion if he persists in endeavouring to solve
the puzzle. But he has no right to insist beforehand that the puzzle is
certainly soluble; for that he cannot know, and the evidence is against
him.

Secondly, if we look at the Darwinian theory by itself, we see at once
that it is incomplete, and the consideration of this incompleteness
gravely modifies the conclusion which would otherwise be rightly drawn
from it, and which, indeed, Darwin himself seems disposed to draw. For
the theory rests on two main pillars, the transmission of
characteristics from progenitor to progeny, and the introduction of
minute variations in the progeny with each successive generation. Now,
the former of these may be said to be well established, and we recognise
it as a law of life that all plants and animals propagate their own
kind. But the latter has, as yet, been hardly examined at all. Each new
generation shows special slight variations. But what causes these
variations? and what determines what they shall be? In Darwin's
investigations these questions are not touched. The variations are
treated as if they were quite indefinite in number and in nature. He
concerns himself only with the effect of these variations after they
have appeared. Some have the effect of giving the plant or animal an
advantage in the struggle of life; some give no such advantage; some are
hurtful. And hence follows the permanent preservation or speedy
destruction of the plants and animals themselves. But we are bound to
look not only to their effects but to their causes, if the theory is to
be completed. And then we cannot fail to see that these variations in
the progeny cannot be due to something in the progenitors, or otherwise
the variations would be all alike, which they certainly are not. They
must, therefore, be due to external circumstances. These slight
variations are produced by the action of the surroundings, by the food,
by the temperature, by the various accidents of life in the progenitors.
Now, when we see this, we see also how gravely it modifies the
conclusions which we have to draw concerning the ancestry of any species
now existing. Let us take, for instance, the great order of vertebrate
animals. At first sight the Darwinian theory seems to indicate that all
these animals are descended from one pair or one individual, and th