EVOLUTION: WHAT IT IS NOT, AND WHAT IT IS. 637 



It is conceived, in short, that most things " growed." Especially is it 

 known that, iu the opinion of the evolutionists as a body, we are all 

 of us ultimately descended from men with tails, who were the final 

 offspring and improved edition of the common gorilla. That, very 

 briefly put, is the popular conception of the various points iu the great 

 modern evolutionary programme. 



It is scarcely necessary to inform the intelligent reader, who, of 

 course, differs fundamentally from that inferior class of human beings 

 known to all of us in our own minds as "other people," that almost 

 every point in the catalogue thus briefly enumerated is a popular fal- 

 lacy of the wildest description, Mr. Darwin did not invent evolution 

 any more than George Stephenson invented the steam-engine, or Mr. 

 Edison the electric telegraph. We are not descended from men with 

 tails any more than we are descended from Indian elephants. There 

 is no evidence that we have anything in particular more than the re- 

 motest fiftieth cousinship with our poor relation the "West African 

 gorilla. Science is not in search of a " missing link " ; few links are 

 anywhere missing, and those are for the most part wholly unimportant 

 ones. If we found the imaginary link in question, he would not be a 

 monkey, nor yet in any way a tailed man. And so forth generally 

 through the whole list of popular beliefs and current fallacies as to 

 the real meaning of evolutionary teaching. Whatever people think 

 evolutionary is for the most part a pure parody of the evolutionist's 

 opinion. 



But a more serious error than all these pervades what we may call 

 the drawing-room view of the evolutionist theory. So far as Society 

 with a big initial is concerned, evolutionism first began to be talked 

 about, and therefore known (for society does not read, it listens, or 

 rather it overhears and catches fragmentary echoes), when Darwin pub- 

 lished his " Origin of Species." That great book consisted simply of 

 a theory as to the causes which led to the distinctions of kind between 

 plants and animals. With evolution at large it had nothing to do ; it 

 took for granted the origin of sun, moon, and stars, planets and com- 

 ets, the earth and all that in it is, the sea and the dry land, the mount- 

 ains and the valleys, nay, even life itself in the crude form, everything, 

 in fact, save the one point of the various types and species of living 

 beings. Long before Darwin's book appeared, evolution had been a 

 recognized force in the moving world of science and philosophj'. Kant 

 and Laplace had worked out the development of suns and earths from 

 white-hot star-clouds. Lyell had worked out the evolution of the 

 earth's surface to its present highly complex geographical condition. 

 Lamarck had worked out the descent of plants and animals from a 

 common ancestor by slow modification. Herbert Spencer had worked 

 out the growth of mind from its simplest beginnings to its highest 

 outcome in human thought. 



But society, like Gallio, cared nothing for all these things. The 



