xii FOREWORD 



organic species cannot even be investigated upon the fixistic 

 assumption, inasmuch as this assumption destroys the prob- 

 lem at the very outset. Unless we assume the possibility, at 

 least, that modern species of plants and animals may have 

 been the product of a gradual process, there is no problem 

 to investigate. It is, however, a far cry from the possibility 

 to the actuality; and the mere fact that an hypothesis is 

 necessary as an incentive to investigation does not by any 

 means imply that the result of the investigation will be the 

 vindication of its inspirational hypothesis. On the contrary, 

 research often results in the overthrow of the very hypothesis 

 which led to its inception. We can, therefore, quite readily 

 admit the necessity of evolution as an hypothesis, while re- 

 jecting its necessity as a dogma. 



Assent to evolution as a dogma is advocated not only by 

 materialists, who see in evolutionary cosmogony proof posi- 

 tive of their monism and the complete overthrow of the idea 

 of Creation, but also by certain Catholic scientists, who seem 

 to fear that religion may become involved in the anticipated 

 ruin of fixism. Thus all resistance to the theory of evolution 

 is deprecated by Father Wasmann and Canon Dorlodot on 

 the assumption that the ultimate triumph of this theory is 

 inevitable, and that failure to make provision for this even- 

 tuality will lead to just such another blunder as theologians 

 of the sixteenth century made in connection with the Coperni- 

 can theory. Recollection of the Galileo incident is, doubtless, 

 salutary, in so far as it suggests the wisdom of caution and 

 the imperative necessity of close contact with ascertained 

 facts, but a consideration of this sort is no warrant whatever 

 for an uncritical acceptance of what still remains unverified. 

 History testifies that verification followed close upon the 

 heels of the initial proposal of the heliocentric theory, but 

 the whole trend of scientific discovery has been to destroy, 

 rather than to confirm, all definite formulations of the evolu- 

 tional theory, in spite of the immense erudition expended 

 in revising them. 



