at God takes clay and moulds a new
creature? If they say that a new creature is produced in none of these
modes, which are too absurd to be believed, then they are required to
describe the mode in which a new creature _may_ be produced--a mode
which does _not_ seem absurd; and such a mode they will find that they
neither have conceived nor can conceive.

Should the believers in special creations consider it unfair thus to
call upon them to describe how special creations take place, I reply
that this is far less than they demand from the supporters of the
Development Hypothesis. They are merely asked to point out a
_conceivable_ mode. On the other hand, they ask, not simply for a
_conceivable_ mode, but for the _actual_ mode. They do not say--Show us
how this _may_ take place; but they say--Show us how this _does_ take
place. So far from its being unreasonable to put the above question, it
would be reasonable to ask not only for a _possible_ mode of special
creation, but for an _ascertained_ mode; seeing that this is no greater
a demand than they make upon their opponents.

And here we may perceive how much more defensible the new doctrine is
than the old one. Even could the supporters of the Development
Hypothesis merely show that the origination of species by the process of
modification is conceivable, they would be in a better position than
their opponents. But they can do much more than this. They can show that
the process of modification has effected, and is effecting, decided
changes in all organisms subject to modifying influences. Though, from
the impossibility of getting at a sufficiency of facts, they are unable
to trace the many phases through which any existing species has passed
in arriving at its present form, or to identify the influences which
caused the successive modifications; yet, they can show that any
existing species--animal or vegetable--when placed under conditions
different from its previous ones, _immediately begins to undergo certain
changes fitting it for the new conditions_. They can show that in
successive generations these changes continue; until, ultimately, the
new conditions become the natural ones. They can show that in cultivated
plants, in domesticated animals, and in the several races of men, such
alterations have taken place. They can show that the degrees of
difference so produced are often, as in dogs, greater than those on
which distinctions of species are in other cases founde