372 GEOLOGICAL BIOLOGY. 



body has his notions as to the cause of the various changes in 

 that very variable phenomenon, the Hkeness and differences 

 in the theories advanced are determined primarily by the 

 point of view in relation to land and water of their advocate. 

 Land and water are sharply contrasted, natural and familiar 

 phenomena; but the Bostonian is accustomed to look to 

 the. eastward for his ideal expanse oi water, and for him the 

 land extends from the solid tcr^'a firma upon which he walks 

 for unmeasured miles to the westward. The man of 

 St. Louis is familiar enough with land, but the ocean is a 

 foreign thing to him ; it does not come into his every- 

 day reckoning. At San Francisco the Bostonian 's notions 

 are simply reversed; the point of view is totally different. 



Residents of these three cities, unless they were to ad- 

 just their definitions to the points of view of their compan- 

 ions, could not talk about even the weather without constant 

 misunderstanding. 



The Act of Evolving as well as the Order of Events Included in 

 the Discussion. ^ — In the same v/ay it may be said that some of 

 the chief misunderstandings and differences of opinion regard- 

 ing the problems of evolution are due to a failure to appreci- 

 ate the differences of philosophical attitude from which the 

 matter is viewed. 



Evolution is concerned with two very distinct fields of 

 human inquiry. On the one hand, evolution is the name for 

 the natural order of loifolding of the characters of organic be- 

 ings that have lived on the earth ; on the other hand evolution 

 is the name for our conception of the mode of operation of the 

 fundamental energy of the universe. Thus it will be seen that 

 the notion of God is as intimately involved in a discussion of 

 evolution as is the notion of organism ; in elaborating the 

 definition of the one we consciously or unconsciously elabo- 

 rate our definition of the other. We are obliged to consider 

 the act of evolving as well as the results of the evolution. 



The Course of the Discussion. — In the present discussion 

 the reader has been led step by step from the detailed, sta- 

 tistical description of actually existing objects of nature, in 

 their relations to time and space and to each other, through 

 the consideration of their classification on the basis of order 



