THE CHINESE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 397 



This intimate dependence on the physical conditions of life is 

 so plainly shown in these animals, that we can well understand 

 how potent have been the factors (i. e., change from light to total 

 darkness and an even cave temperature) which have operated on 

 out-of-door forms to induce variation. Given great changes in 

 the physical surroundings, inducing loss of eyes from disuse, the 

 abolition in some cases of the optic ganglia and optic nerves, the 

 elongation of the appendages, isolation from out-of-door allies, 

 and the transmission by heredity owing to close in-and-in breed- 

 ing within the narrow fixed limits of the cave, and are not these 

 collectively verm causes, ; do they not fully account for the origi- 

 nal variations and their fixation ; in short, can we not clearly un- 

 derstand the mode of origin of cave species and genera ? What 

 room is there in a case like this or in that of parasitic animals for 

 the operation of natural selection ? The latter principle only 

 plays, it has seemed to us, a very subordinate and final part in the 

 set of causes inducing the origin of these forms. 



-+*+- 



THE CHINESE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 



By ADELE M. FIELDE. 



"^VTOT long ago I engaged a new Chinese teacher, Mr. Khu, and 

 --^l as I was his first foreign acquaintance, as he had never 

 tampered with books of Western origin, and as he was said to 

 have made a special study of the occult sciences and to be de- 

 voutly religious, I considered him a treasure-trove. That which 

 I here set down as the Chinese theory of evolution has been 

 translated largely from Mr. Khu's expositions of cosmogony. It 

 agrees with what I have gathered, through conversations in the 

 vernacular, from other native scholars. 



Neither Lau-Tse, Confucius, nor Buddha, the founders of the 

 three great religions whose tenets harmoniously dwell together in 

 the Chinese mind, has set forth an account of the making of the 

 universe. But the human intellect seems to trend inevitably 

 toward attempts to explain the existence of things seen, and so 

 there is a Chinese theory of evolution, whose exact origin it is 

 difficult to trace through the four millenniums and the myriads 

 of volumes that hold the written history of the empire. 



In the beginning all matter was transparent, diffused, and 

 without differentiation. In it dwelt the dual powers ; both subtle, 

 ethereal, and eternal ; but the one was virile, warm, radiant, and 

 active ; the other, feminine, cold, somber, and quiescent. These 

 dual powers are symbolized by two similar, conjoined figures, 

 whose outlines may be made by drawing upon the diameter of a 



