PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 369 



principles that organisms multiply so rapidly in geometrical pro- 

 gression that only a few can survive, that a struggle for existence 

 is the consequence, and that those survive which, on account of 

 some variation, best correspond with their environment; no two 

 organisms being identical, although bearing a general likeness to 

 their parents and to each other. Natural selection, then, with 

 sexual selection and some other principles added, is what is meant 

 by Darwinism. 



But the term appears recently to have increased in content, 

 if its meaning has not actually been changed. Marrett says — 



" Anthropology is the child of Darwin. Darwinism makes 

 it possible. Reject the Darwinian point of view, and you 

 must reject Anthropology also. What, then, is Darwinism? 

 Not a cut-and-dried doctrine. Not a dogma. Darwinism 

 is a working hypothesis. You suppose something to be true, 

 and w^ork away to see whether, in the light of that supposed 

 truth, certain facts fit together better than they do on any 

 other supposition. What is the truth that Darwinism sup- 

 poses? Simply that all the forms of life in the world are 

 related together ; and that the relations manifested in time 

 and space between the different lives are sufficiently uniform 

 to be described under a general formula, or law of evolution." 



-Again, he says — 



"With Darwin, then, we anthropologists say: Let a)iy and 

 every portion of human history be studied in the light of the 

 whole history of mankind, and against the background of the 

 history of living things in general. It is the Darwinian out- 

 look that matters. None of Darwin's particular doctrines 

 will necessarily endure the test of time and trial. Into the 

 melting-pot must they go as often as any man of science deems 

 it fitting. But Darwinism as the touch of nature that makes 

 the whole v/orld kin can iiardly pass away. At any rate, 

 anthropology stands or falls with the working hypothesis; 

 derived from Darwinism, of a fundamental kinship and con- 

 tinuity amid change between all the forms of human life." 



The above statements will illustrate the term " Darwinism " 

 m its narrowest and in its widest connotation. If we change our 

 landmarks, we should record the fact. 



Evolution, then, means that every organism, every plant, and 

 -animal is the sum of the product of its heredity and its environ- 

 ment, that every human being is at any given time the sum or 

 product of what he originally received, actively or potentially, 

 from all his various ancestors, and what his environment has made 

 him. Mankind has abandoned the theory that children with any 



