4 o 4 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE EVOLUTION OF SERVICE BY UNION AND COOPERA- 

 TION, CONSERVATION AND EXCHANGE 



By Professor WILLIAM PATTEN 



DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 



THE specialist, who has wandered far into the wilderness of created 

 things, seeking the solution of his problem at its source, must 

 pause now and again to note the location of the sun and the direction 

 in which the streams are flowing. Having done so, he well may greet 

 his distant colleagues and send a field-note of progress to his friends 

 at home. Herewith is such a greeting and such a field-note of progress. 



Part I 

 I. Evolution and the Conduct of Life 



The theory of evolution is now accepted by all classes of intellectual 

 leaders. Its transforming influence has penetrated society far beyond 

 the point where the theory is formally recognized, or the meaning of 

 the term even vaguely understood. It has destroyed old standards for 

 the interpretation of life; erased old formulas for the conduct of life; 

 and has compelled us to make new standards and formulas more in har- 

 mony with our new conceptions of nature and her methods. 



With the disappearance of the old landmarks, the acknowledged 

 leaders of humanity, of all kinds of belief and training, are groping 

 about seeking a new standard for the interpretation and the conduct of 

 life ; a standard that is based on the best of the old religious, and on the 

 best of the new knowledge; one that is not in downright conflict with 

 the common-sense teachings of every-day life, nor with the conduct of 

 affairs in which these leaders are the acknowledged experts ; nor with 

 the vision of the modern prophets who foresee the coming of a new man. 



It is therefore again time to enquire what is the nature of the 

 underlying processes common to the evolution of the living and of the 

 non-living world? What, after all, constitutes progress in nature, and 

 how it is accomplished? In what directions are the great evolutionary 

 streams of plant life, and animal life, moving? What are the ethics 

 and morals of nature, if indeed she has any? What has science to 

 offer the trustees of tradition in place of that which it seems to have de- 

 stroyed ? What have the students of nature, and of life at large, learned, 

 however elemental, that will be to all mankind a fundamental truth and 

 a guiding principle to right living? Is mankind to live, and make 



