If such be the case, if there be no Free-will, and no possibility whatever of doing or believing anything but what is predetermined for us as a necessary part of our being,-where is the sense of all the strenuous efforts that are being made to convert the people to a belief which, according to its own principles, nothing in the world can make them accept, unless nothing in the world can prevent them from accepting it?
"The Old Riddle and the Newest Answer"
John Gerard
Mr. Darwin was as strongly opposed to the idea of Nature making sudden bounds, as to that of a predetermined course of development.
"The Old Riddle and the Newest Answer"
John Gerard
Precisely similar is the part played by Natural Selection, except that it must needs play it immensely more slowly,-and if no one can fancy that human agency could by any possibility grow roses unless from some stock predetermined to grow into a rose and nothing else, what grounds have we that can be called scientific for attributing to a blind struggle for life an incomparably greater potency?
"The Old Riddle and the Newest Answer"
John Gerard