THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



More and the New Atlantis of Francis Bacon, but, in 

 each case, the author is careful to warn the reader 

 that the island is fictitious; Utopia is derived from 

 the Greek and means nowhere, and the New Atlantis 

 is evidently a second edition of Plato's mythical 

 island of the same name. The authors are also careful 

 to warn us that the bridges which finally connect 

 these islands with European civilization are built out 

 of the hyperphysical material of their minds. Social 

 reformers of today give us with much assurance new 

 ideal types of society which they describe as the state 

 of Eugenics. They follow tradition so far as to choose 

 a descriptive name which is constructed from the 

 Greek and means to be well-born, and to outline a 

 government and laws which might be a blessing to 

 harassed humanity but which are admitted to be, at 

 the present time, an ideal. Are they as careful, as 

 were their predecessors, to point out that an Eugen- 

 ical Society, based on the laws of Darwin's theory of 

 natural selection, involves also Darwin's Angiosper- 

 mian continent as a habitat'? 



That the problem of the origin of angiosperms is 

 still unsolved is clear from the recent opinion of Bate- 

 son." He first states that angiosperms are known not 

 to have existed in carboniferous times, but that we 

 must believe they are the lineal descendants of the 

 carboniferous plants. He then adds: "Where is the 

 difficulty^ If the angiosperms came from the car- 



22 "Address before the American Association for the Advancement 

 of Science," published in Science, p. 58, 1922. 



C 158: 



