January, 1928 



EVOLUTION 



Page Five 



Meaning of Evolution 



By David Starr Jordan 



THE general theory of evolution is simple enough. 

 All material objects change with time and space, 

 and these changes are not random but due to definite 

 causes, meanwhile as a whole and in detail following an 

 orderly system. 



We have no data on which we can assume that an 

 orderly universe such as ours could exist without an 

 Ordainer. Nor does our mental make-up react favor- 

 ably to the idea. But of the Infinite Intelligence or Su- 

 preme Force different men in different ages have had 

 endless diverging conceptions. A "Creator", to use a 

 very insufficient human word, must certainly be as broad 

 as his works. Infinite traits cannot be expressed in our 

 very finite language, nor can they be understood by our 

 very finite human brain. Hence our duties, towards one 

 another and towards ourselves, which we agree are also 

 our duties towards the Infinite, press upon us more ac- 

 tively and actually than conceptions of Theology, which 

 is the science of what no one knows, nor ever can know 

 in any detail. 



Actual students in Evolution are now divisible into 

 three schools, observers, experimenters and philosophers. 

 Essence of Darwinism 



The school of observers, with Darwin, depends on 

 what one may see all around him. Darwin himself de- 

 voted thirty years to the study of the divergence of spe- 

 cies and to the accumulation of all facts which bore on the 

 question. From this source comes, as I have already indi- 

 cated, the strongest of all lines of argument, the cumula- 

 tive. The same truth comes up from every quarter, with 

 nowhere a fact which stands in opposition. The essence 

 of Darwinism is that in running the great gauntlet of 

 life, those individuals, men, animals or plants, which 

 proved themselves enduring and adaptable have survived 

 and have left descendents, who inherit more or less per- 

 fectly the same traits. Those weak or inadaptable (with 

 many others) perish along the way, and a degree of com- 

 petition is thus kept up which is the chief moving force 

 of progress. The inherent factors, heredity and variation. 

 keep up a slowly diverging series: no two individuals are 

 ever quite alike, and none diverges very far from its 

 immediate ancestral possibilities. 



The whole world, furthermore, is beset by barriers 

 of one sort or another, mountains, seas, climate, food, 

 which break up the mass. In the shelter of a barrier, 

 and under new conditions, new species are moulded, 

 and we do not know of any species which may conceiv- 

 ably have been established in any other way. The for- 

 mation of races of men, of dialects of speech, of all col- 

 lective changes of whatever sort, depend on barriers 

 limiting migration. 



The school of experimenters work largely in the green- 

 house or breeding pen, without as it seems to me. any 

 adequate field of study. Some of them speak of Darwin 

 as a back number. They lay less stress than I think 

 they should on selection and heredity, finding in "muta- 

 tions" or sudden changes, the chief clue to the origin of 



species. It is certain that remarkable variations or freaks 

 sometimes arise, and these may often be preserved by 

 heredity. Such variants constitute the basis for the art 

 of selective breeding and their scientific study (genetics) 

 is of the greatest value, but they have little or no place 

 in the actual formation of species. And in no import- 

 ant respect have the charts now in line of completion di- 

 verged far from the lines laid down by the master, 

 Darwin. 



Man's Place in Nature Secure 



That "Man's Place is in Nature" is so well supported as 

 to leave room for no other inference. Man has certainly 

 arisen by slow degrees from an early mammalian stock. 

 Not from any of the existing types of man-like or an- 

 thropoid apes, still less from either of the two very 

 different groups called monkeys. But it is known with 

 reasonable certainty that the earliest man and the earli- 

 est anthropoids have had a common origin. Many of the 

 various skeletons recently found in different parts of the 

 world show traits peculiar to man as well as to apes. 



In regard to the exact origin of man details are still 

 uncertain. This fact gives rise to sharp differences of 

 opinion. The earlier idea is that some extinct ally of 

 the chimpanzee, apparently an arboreal or tree-inhabit- 

 ing anthropoid, was ancestral to man. But it may be 

 that man was primarily nomadic, erect in posture, living 

 on the ground, climbing trees when necessary by hug- 

 ging them; and that his families were held together by 

 common speech or by the prolonged infancy of the 

 young. 



While the theory of Organic Evolution is not primarily 

 concerned with man, and questions of his primal an- 

 cestry do not affect the main problem — yet man's place 

 in nature remains the same, whatever view we may take 

 as to his actual but still imperfectly known ancestors. 

 In our records of the life of to-day and that of geologic 

 history we find evidence of constant divergence, com- 

 parable by analogy to the spreading of the limbs of a 

 tree. Each type shows a constant forward movement — 

 upward or downward — along its own line and never re- 

 turning. In looking for "missing links," we must go 

 back in mind to find the common stock which preceded 

 divergence. The link between man and apes is not a 

 man-ape nor an ape-man, but some less specialized type 

 which lay behind them both. The nearest approach to 

 it thus far discovered is the Pithecanthropus, but this 

 Java Ape-man is not likely our ancestor, for our lineage 

 is older than he. 



No Conflict with Noblest Conception 



To men of knowledge and honesty there can surely 

 be no permanent conflict between a widening knowledge 

 of the universe, the details of its nature and range, and 

 the noblest conception of man's duty towards his fellow 

 man and himself. The more we know of life and of 

 the world the more surely can we "walk the Earth's 

 crust in adoration," and the more kindly our relation 

 to our fellow beings. 



