are to be found in ancient Indian philosophy. Of the early 

 Greek physicists, Anaximander conceived the heavenly 

 bodies to be aggregates of matter, and organic bodies to 

 originate from pristine mud. Empedocles taught that the 

 origin of things is due, not to transformation, but to the sepa- 

 ration and combination of permanent elements. Leucippus 

 and Democritus taught a doctrine of atoms, while Critias 

 was the first who perceived the truth of the historical and 

 social development of man. Aristotle showed a leaning to a 

 natiiral interpretation of phenomena, while the Epicureans 

 and Lucretius took a still further step in the right direction. 

 Lucretius esjiecially, with the foresight of the poet, antici- 

 pated, although from no sound basis, yet in a marked 

 degree, the modern doctrines of the genesis of worlds and 

 life forms, of the struggle for existence, and of the growth 

 of language. To Descartes we owe something of the 

 conception of nature as an orderly evolution, as well as 

 much of the impulse in thought that has resulted in the 

 developments of modem science. But, after the develop- 

 ment of Physics, Chemistry, Geology, and the cognate 

 sciences, it became only a question of who would be first to 

 solve the problem that was being so grandly unfolded. 

 The solution was wholly and completely Darwin's. Thus 

 by slow degrees has been matured, though it is even yet in 

 the infancy of its ajiplication to problems still untouched, 

 that doctrine of evolution which covers the whole realm of 

 science, from the process of the suns to the study of 

 articulate speech. It is due to a naturalists' club, and is 

 my intention this evening, to devote myself specially to 

 the consideration of the evolution of organic beings. 



There is some confusion in the popular mind as to the 

 meaning of Organic Evolution. To a scientific society it is 

 needless to explain that evolution does not mean that an ass 

 may turn into an elephant, or that the frolicsome monkey 

 is the ancestor of the sage president of some learned society. 

 2^0 greater mistake could be made than to suppose that 

 descent has taken place in a Unear series. "What organic 

 evolution really means will, perhaps, be made clear by an 

 illustration. Suppose that a flood had covered the countless 

 branches of some gigantic tree up to the topmost twigs. 

 An inhabitant of the moon, to whom a tree would presum- 

 ably be a new object, skimming the surface of the waters, 

 woTild hardly suspect the vital connection between the twigs 

 peeping above them. Each would be for him a little inde- 



