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se to have been at work. The radical distinction between the two theories consists in the one assuming an immediate action of some supernatural or inscrutable cause, while the other assumes the immediate action of natural--and therefore of possibly discoverable--causes. But in order to sustain this latter assumption, the theory of descent is under no logical necessity to furnish a full proof of _all_ the natural causes which may have been concerned in working out the observed results. We do not know the natural causes of many diseases; but yet no one nowadays thinks of reverting to any hypothesis of a supernatural cause, in order to explain the occurrence of any disease the natural causation of which is obscure. The science of medicine being in so many cases able to explain the occurrence of disease by its hypothesis of natural causes, medical men now feel that they are entitled to assume, on the basis of a wide analogy, and therefore on the basis of a strong antecedent presumption, that all diseases are due to natural causes, whether or not in particular cases such causes happen to have been discovered. And from this position it follows that medical men are not logically bound to entertain any supernatural theory of an obscure disease, merely because as yet they have failed to find a natural theory. And so it is with biologists and their theory of descent. Even if it be fully proved to them that the causes which they have hitherto discovered, or suggested, are inadequate to account for all the facts of organic nature, this would in no wise logically compel them to vacate their theory of evolution, in favour of the theory of creation. All that it would so compel them to do would be to search with yet greater diligence for the natural causes still undiscovered, but in the existence of which they are, by their independent evidence in favour of the theory, bound to believe. In short, the issue is not between the theory of a supernatural cause and the theory of any one particular natural cause, or set of causes--such as natural selection, use, disuse, and so forth. The issue thus far--or where only the _fact_ of evolution is concerned--is between the theory of a supernatural cause as operating immediately in numberless acts of special creation, and the theory of natural causes as a whole, whether these happen, or do not happen, to have been hitherto discovered. This much by way of preliminaries being understood, we have
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