ASPECTS OF KINETIC EVOLUTION 293 



are able mentally to follow out the evolution of all forms of life 

 from one or a few primordial forms. Natural selection has 

 thus supplied that motive power of change and adaptation that 

 was wanting in all earlier attempts at explanation, and this has 

 led to its very general acceptance both by naturalists and by the 

 great majority of thinkers and men of science." 1 



But notwithstanding the categorical certitude of these and 

 many similar statements which might be collected, it is still 

 very doubtful whether any naturalist, that is, any careful and 

 experienced student of plant or animal species in nature, would 

 definitely claim or undertake to prove that isolation or natural 

 selection is, or could be, a true, actuating cause of evolution. 

 Nevertheless, many such students have permitted themselves to 

 use expressions which can be so interpreted, and the philo- 

 sophical, and especially the unbiological part of the scientific 

 community, has not hesitated to repeat and elaborate this idea 

 as though it were an ascertained and undeniable fact. 



Primitive peoples are ever ready to personify nature and in- 

 animate objects and to ascribe to them the ability to grow and 

 to put forth other spontaneous actions. Modern science has 

 gone to the other extreme. It has denied to the species of 

 plants and animals the powers of development which they 

 really possess, and has sought for the causes of organic evolu- 

 tion among the inanimate objects of the environment. It has 

 done this quite gratuitously and as a matter of course, without 

 taking the trouble to raise the question whether there might be 

 any alternative worthy of consideration. 



The primitive theory of a flat earth, with its various childish 

 explanations of the sun's whereabouts during the night, endured 

 for thousands of years, but finally gave place to the conception 

 of a spherical earth, about which the luminary revolved contin- 

 uously. Nevertheless, this improved doctrine, while adequate 

 for the explanation of the phenomenon of days and nights, was 

 also erroneous, and had to be replaced by a still broader inter- 

 pretation of astronomical facts. 



Astronomers of the Ptolemaic school saw no reason to doubt 

 that the earth was stationary, and they were able to predict 



'Wallace, Alfred Russell, 1900. The History of the Nineteenth Century. 



