ZOOLOGY, AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 141 



in themselves, have proved to have a history which can be studied 

 by the methods of science. They have been found to be steps in a 

 long sequence of events as orderly and discoverable as the events 

 which are studied by the astronomer or the geologist. 



The cultivation of natural science in this historical field, and 

 the discovery that the present order of living things, including 

 conscious, thinking, ethical man, has followed after an older and 

 simpler state of nature, is not " philosophy," but science. It 

 involves no more belief in the teachings of any system of phi- 

 losophy than does the knowledge that we are the children of our 

 parents and the parents of our children ; but it is what Huxley 

 means by "evolution." J 



His lectures on " Evolution " deal with paleontology, and 

 narrate facts which are found in every text-book on the subject ; 

 but natural science, as it is taught in the text-books on botany 

 and zoology and embryology and paleontology, is, most assuredly, 

 no " Philosophy of Evolution." It fell to Huxley to fight and 

 win a battle for science ; and while he himself calls it a battle 

 for evolution, his use of the word need mislead none, although it 

 has misled many. 



One word in its time plays many parts, and the word "evo- 

 lution " has had many meanings. To-day, in popular estimation, 

 an evolutionist is not a follower of Bonnet ; nor one who is occu- 

 pied with the binomial theorem, or with the evolutions of fleets 

 and armies. Neither is he a cultivator of natural science. What- 

 ever the word may have meant in the past, it has, in common 

 speech, come to mean a believer in that philosophy of evolution 

 which, according to such evolutionists as Huxley, is " premature." 

 Since this is so, and since the growth of language is beyond in- 

 dividual control, would it not be well for those who stand where 

 Huxley stands, and " have nothing to say to any philosophy of 

 evolution," to stop calling themselves " Evolutionists," and to be 

 content with the good old name of " Naturalist " ? 



To the pious evolutionist, who asks what will become of the 

 fixed order of nature if we are not convinced that everything is 

 determinate, we answer that, while this sort of reasoning is not 

 new, it has a strange sound in the mouth of a student of science. 



1 Sec Huxley, " Essays," V. i., pp. 44-54. 



