CREATION BY EVOLUTION 



Evolution: Modification of traits from generation to 

 generation through internal and external factors. 



The evolution of living beings or the transmutation of 

 species is conditioned by at least four influences, always 

 present and continually acting on every individual, animal 

 or plant. These moulding factors are heredity, variation, 

 selection, segregation. A species, as properly defined, is a 

 kind of animal or plant which during countless generations 

 has undergone these influences in the open, has thus run 

 the gauntlet of life, and has endured. A sheltered form, 

 watched over in a greenhouse or a breeding pen, is not a 

 genuine species; to become one it must hold its own and 

 survive outside, in the stress of Nature. "The origin of 

 species" therefore concerns the co5peration of tendencies 

 inherent in the organism, these being diverted, modified, or 

 directed by obstacles without. 



Inlierent tendencies may be summed up as heredity and 

 variation. Heredity is the conservative influence, which 

 unifies groups, limiting divergence; variation is a force 

 creating divergence. Variation results from a complex series 

 of influences, the most obvious and apparently the most 

 important being the biparental factor — that is, sex. External 

 influences, acting on the traits that distinguish species, by 

 serving as obstacles to the even flow of heredity, are selection 

 and isolation. Selection destroys unadapted individuals, and 

 often, through them, the types or species they represent. 

 Isolation, with its consequent segregation, or prevention 

 of mass-breeding, leads to the separation of minor groups 

 from the original stock by barriers, mainly but not wholly 

 geographical. Selection fits all types to their environment; 

 it enforces adaptation on all living beings but does not 

 divide them into species. Segregation is the final moulder 



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