FOREWORD 



By Henry Fairfield Osborn 



In this volume leading biologists of England and America, 

 men distinguished in many special lines of research, are 

 cooperating in a great endeavor to give the full meaning of 

 the word "evolution." No word in any language at the 

 present time is so comprehensive as this; few words are so 

 misunderstood. 



The original import of the word ''evolution" — to unfold 

 or to unroll, as a flower is unfolded — is too restricted, 

 because, as theoretically presented in Lloyd Morgan's doc- 

 trine of emergence and as practically proved by palaeontol- 

 ogists in both the invertebrate and the vertebrate world since 

 the time of Waagen, evolution is far more than the unfolding 

 of something that already exists, as the germ develops and 

 unfolds in the beauty of a rose; evolution is the incessant 

 appearance of new qualities, new characters, new powers, 

 new beauties, for which there is no antecedent in experience 

 or no evident promise in the germ itself. 



We almost feel the need of returning to the wonderfully 

 adaptive language of the Greeks in an attempt to discover 

 a new word or combination of words which shall better 

 express all the many forms, of activity Nature is now 

 revealing far more clearly than when, in a relatively 

 early and simple state of biologic knowledge, the word 

 evolution was chosen as more appropriate than mutation or 

 transformisme. If from Greek sources a new word could 



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