CATALYSIS AS THE EFFICIENT CAUSE OF EVOLUTION 251 



spite of his protean activities as scientist, poet, philosopher, author, 

 etc., he died in dire poverty in 1840 in Philadelphia. 7 



Another early American evolutionist was James Lawrence Cabell, 

 Professor of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology in the University 

 of Virginia, to whose book 8 Professor Charles M. Blackford has called 

 attention. 9 It contained much in common with the views of Darwin 

 which appeared a few months later. 



The powerful support given Darwin's carefully documented 

 views by Sir Charles Lyell, Sir William J. Hooker and Thomas 

 Huxley led to their speedy acceptance by scientists. But ecclesi- 

 astical opposition, focused on a defense of dogma, was immediate, 

 violent and persistent, and its repercussions appeared some years 

 ago in the Stopes case, 10 involving a law passed by the State of 

 Tennessee to prohibit the teaching of "evolution" in state-sup- 

 ported institutions. For centuries orthodox chronology was based 

 on the "Annales" (1650-1654) of the English Archbishop John 

 Ussher, who calculated from biblical data that the Creation began 

 on Sunday, Oct. 23rd, 4004 B.C., and ended at sundown six days 

 later, after the creation of animals and of man. But archeology 

 has found that the ancient Egyptians had a well-developed civiliza- 

 tion about 6000 B.C., and science has credible evidence that the 

 earth is about two billion years old. The Proterozoic era is esti- 

 mated at 500 million years, the Mesozoic at 125 million years, and 

 the Cenozoic at 60 million years. Evidences of man appear in 

 the early Quaternary, and may go back to the Pliocene epoch 

 of the Cenozoic. 



Today, however much scientifically informed people may differ 

 as to the relative value of the various factors influencing evolution, 

 they are unanimous in accepting evolution as a fact. It will be 

 noted that natural selection and the survival of the fittest operate 

 at what may be termed macro-levels of organization, involving not 

 only competition between various groups of plants and animals, 

 but also their adaptability to changing climates and other natural 

 conditions. On the other hand, unless heredity could be de- 

 pended upon to carry on the genetic and other changes which 

 occur at micro-levels of organization or structure, natural selection 

 would have nothing upon which to operate. Therefore, while 

 fully recognizing the existence and operation of many aspects and 

 factors governing the evolution of populations over the long past, 

 we must confine ourselves here to the more basic micro-level, or 

 ultramicro-level of catalysis, from which emerge all the heritable 



