se thus grinds on
and has ever ground on, without interruption; if every event is closely
bound to its physical antecedent, life to the cell, mind to brain, man
to his animal ancestry and bodily conditions,--what other result will
there be than an inevitable surrender to materialism? When Laplace was
asked by Napoleon, on presenting to him his famous essay on the nebular
hypothesis of the origin of the stellar universe, "Why do I see here no
mention of the Deity?" the French astronomer proudly replied: "Sire, I
have no need of that hypothesis."

Is not that the natural lesson of Evolutionism, to say that God is a
hypothesis, no longer needed by science and which progressive thought,
therefore, better dismiss?

I do not think so. Old time materialism dismissed the idea of God
because it dismissed the idea of a beginning. The forces and phenomena
of the world were supposed eternal; and therefore a Creator was
unnecessary. But the conception of Evolution is radically different. It
is a movement that demands a motor force behind it. It is a movement,
moreover, that according to the testimony of modern science cannot have
been eternal. The modern theory of heat and the dissipation of energy
requires that our solar system and the nebula from which it sprang
should have had a beginning in some finite period of time. The
evolutionary process cannot have been going on forever; for the amount
of heat and the number of degrees of temperature and the rate of
cooling, are all finite, calculable quantities, and therefore the
process cannot have been going on for more than a certain finite number
of years, more or less millions, say. Moreover, if the original
fire-mist was perfectly homogeneous, and not impelled into motion by any
external force, it would never have begun to rotate and evolve into
planets and worlds. If perfectly homogeneous, it would have remained,
always balanced and always immobile. To start it on its course of
rotation and evolution, there must have been either some external
impelling power, or else some original differentiation of forces or
conditions; for which, again, some other cause than itself must be
supposed. For the well-known law of inertia forbids that any material
system that is in absolute equilibrium should spontaneously start itself
into motion. As John Stuart Mill has admitted, "the laws of nature can
give no account of their own origin."

In the second place, notice that the materialistic inter