TWENTY FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING. 93 



What we need to teach the sons and daughters of our farmers, is the 

 principles of rural occupations, and in addition to that, a general broad- 

 ening of the horizon, which will interest them in all the great movements 

 of the time and make them better citizens, and, at the same time, they 

 become better farmers. 



One of the means I take in order to broaden out the horizon of a young 

 man off the farm, is to talk to him about evolution. It is probably the 

 greatest question before the human mind at the present time. It is one 

 of the milestones in the progress of the world. It ranks along with those 

 three or four other great landmarks which, since the introduction of the 

 Christian faith, will always be the landmarks of time: the reformation, 

 the promulgation of inductive logic, and the law of gravitation, the 

 hypothesis of evolution. All of these will forever stand as landmarks in 

 the progress of our civilization. I ought to say that there is not one 

 famous naturalist in all the world today who is not in some degree an 

 evolutionist. Our teachers of the languages, philology, literature — all 

 now call themselves scientific men, because, like the natural scientists, 

 they endeavor to discover the origin of their subject, and trace its actual 

 unfolding and growth, or its evolution. 



So, when our young men are taught Latin today, they are taught the 

 relation of the Latin language to other languages, and they try to find out 

 not only how to read Caesar, but how the language ever came to be and 

 how it has grown and how it died. And so the teacher of English phil- 

 ology, today, teaches not only what the language is that was used by 

 Milton and Shakespeare and others, but he teaches how it came to be, 

 how it has grown up, what it is, and how it is growing at the present 

 time. Everything we study is contemplated with reference to its origin, 

 its present condition, progress, and destiny, and everyone is in that sense 

 an evolutionist. 



Evolution means the unfolding of life, or change of one form into some 

 other form of life or existence. Every one of us here today is an evolu- 

 tionist, because we deal with plants and animals, and we have practical 

 evidence that evolution is true because we know that one tomato is pro- 

 duced from another, one breed of cow from another, and one kind of hen 

 from another kind. Now, when I say that every scientist is an evolu- 

 tionist, I do not mean to say that all scientists agree as to how this evo- 

 lution has taken place. I suppose no two writers are fully agreed as to 

 all of the details, as to how it has all come about. I might say also thai 

 probably no two are agreed as to what the ultimate origin of all forms 

 was. I may be an evolutionist and still believe in special creation. I 

 may believe there were certain stages of creation, and yet I know that 

 certain forms of plants have come from others. So, while I say that all 

 are evolutionists, I do not sav that all believe that life has come from one 

 original thing, though the drift of all opinion in the scientific world is 

 toward the hypothesis that life has come from one point. What the 

 origin of that life is, is bevond our ken, and perhaps always will be. 



If, then, every one believes in evolution, it would be pertinent to inquire 

 what the general hypotheses are as to how it transpired and how all the 

 varied forms of nature have come to be. 



There is no one conception before the human mind that gives us such a 

 broad survev of the whole theory of human endeavor, as the hypothesis 



