IX
My dear——,
Your grounds of objection appear to be now changed. You say you do not understand my position with regard to Evolution, as I described it before, and referred to it in my last letter. If I admit Evolution, you ask how I can consistently deny that every nation and every individual, Israel and Christ included, "proceeded from material causes by necessary sequence according to fixed laws;" and in that case what becomes of such metaphors as "the regulating hand of God," "God the Ruler of the Universe" and the like? It is a common saying, you tell me, among those of your companions who have a turn for science, that "Evolution has disposed of the old proofs of the existence of a God:" and you ask me how I meet this objection.
I meet it by asking you another question exactly like your own. I take a lump of clay and a potter's wheel, and "from these material causes by necessary sequence according to fixed laws" I mould a vessel; is there no room in this process for "the regulating hand of man" and for "man the creator of the vessel"? In other words, may not these "fixed laws," and that "necessity" of which you admit the existence, represent the perpetual pressure of the Creator's hand, or will, upon the Universe?
By Evolution is meant that all results are evolved from immediate causes, which are evolved from distant causes, which are themselves evolved from more distant causes;
