582* POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



transformations gradually produced. The empirical generaliza- 

 tion indicated above as reached by contemplation of phenomena 

 of various orders, becomes a rational generalization on finding 

 that throughout these various orders of phenomena a like co- 

 operation of causes inevitably works out similar observed effects. 

 It is not by accident but by necessity that these transformations 

 of all kinds have common traits. 



This is not the place in which to explain and illustrate this 

 universal law of transformation and these universal causes of 

 transformation. Here I am concerned merely to indicate their 

 scope, and to say that the Doctrine of Evolution, rightly con- 

 ceived, has for its subject-matter not the changes exhibited by 

 the organic world only, but also the changes which went on dur- 

 ing an enormous period before life began, and the changes which 

 have gone on since life rose to its highest form, and Man, passing 

 into the associated state, gave origin to the endlessly varied prod- 

 ucts of social life. It has for its subject-matter the entire cosmic 

 process, from nebular condensation down to the development of 

 picture-records into written language, or the formation of local 

 dialects ; and its general result is to show that all the minor 

 transformations in their infinite varieties are parts of the one 

 vast transformation, and display throughout the same law and 

 cause that the Infinite and Eternal Energy has manifested itself 

 everywhere and always in modes ever unlike in results but ever 

 like in principle. 



How utterly different the popular conception of evolution is 

 from evolution as rightly conceived will now be manifest. The 

 prevailing belief is doubly erroneous contains an error within 

 an error. The theory of natural selection is wrongly supposed to 

 be identical with the theory of organic evolution ; and the theory 

 of organic evolution is wrongly supposed to be identical with the 

 theory of evolution at large. In current thought the entire trans- 

 formation is included in one part of it, and that part of it is in- 

 cluded in one of its factors. From his place of vantage Lord 

 Salisbury might have done much to dissipate these delusions ; 

 but, unhappily, both his language and his arguments have 

 tended to do the reverse. Nineteenth Century. 



Sir Joseph Lister has been chosen president for the Liverpool meeting' 

 of the British Association, to be held in 1896, beginning September 16th. 

 The meeting for 1897 was appointed to be held in Toronto. 



Prof. Weismann proposes germinal selection as the name of a hypoth- 

 esis supplementary to that of natural selection, by wbich he ex^jlaius an 

 apparent protection of useful variations from their first appearance, so that 

 when wanted for natural selection they are always at hand. 



