DOCTRINE OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION = 483 
of one beginning there were many. But if creation be con- 
ceived of as a frequently recurring process, why limit the 
frequency? Why not admit that creation is going on con- 
tinually and that each birth may be a new beginning? Such 
a continuous creation of new forms fitted to new conditions 
is precisely what evolutionsts suppose to have taken place. 
When a creationist comes to believe that the Creator is 
continually making new forms out of old ones, so that by the 
accumulation of small changes through many generations 
great differences result, his theory of creation has already 
evolved into the doctrine of organic evolution. Modern 
botanists adopt the evolutionary point of view. 
The word evolution ! means primarily an unrolling or un- 
folding. A bud evolves as it expands into a flower. The 
oak evolves from the acorn germ. In this process of unfold- 
ing its possibilities the organism passes through successive 
stages each differing slightly from the one which went before, 
and from the one which follows; but showing extreme differ- 
ences between the earliest and the latest stages. The evolu- 
tion of a species is conceived of by analogy to be a similar 
unfolding of possibilities through a series of generations, 
in the course of which new features arise, are inherited, and 
become more and more pronounced as slight changes con- 
tinue to appear in parts which had already been slightly 
changed. Fundamental resemblances between any two in- 
dividuals or types are thus accounted for on the supposition 
that they have inherited from a common ancestor the feat- 
ures they have in common, while the differences they exhibit 
are regarded as representing the sum of those small individual 
differences which have continually arisen and been trans- 
mitted along their diverging lines of descent. Hence, broadly 
speaking, the degree of likeness becomes a measure of the 
closeness of kinship. 
On this view it follows that a truly natural system of 
classifying organisms is an arrangement expressing degrees 
of kinship as inferred from all the resemblances and differ- 
ences that can be observed. If we knew enough about all 
1 Ky-o-lu’tion < L. evolutus pp. of evolvere, unroll, unfold <e, out; 
volvere, roll. 
