19093 -^ifO^ Years of Darwinism 



forming, a process defined as something distinct from evolution. 

 To their minds selection and isolation, as obstacles in the stream 

 of life, simply help to split the moving group of organisms into 

 different categories or species, while the impulse to forward 

 movement is internal, and the changes of evolution proper 

 affect groups as a whole and are not concerned with the breaking 

 into species. 



This view may be questioned ... as untrue in fact or "Rdum- 

 as a matter of words only. . . . We know nothing of evo- -^"^^^ -^ow- 

 lution i7i vacuo, of progress in life without relation to environ- '^^'■""^" 

 ment. All living forms are split up into species, adaptation to 

 external conditions being traceable in every structure. 

 We know of no organism which has escaped or can escape from 

 the influence of selection. In like manner, in a world beset 

 with physical barriers, no organism can escape the evolutionary 

 friction which prevents uniformity in breeding. There must 

 be some degree of "raumliche Sondenmg" even within a drop 

 of water. 



Among the factors everywhere and inevitably connected with 

 the course of descent of any species, variation, heredity, selec- 

 tion, and isolation must appear; the first two innate, part of 

 the make-up of organic life, the last two extrinsic, arising from 

 the necessities of environment. And not one of these can find 

 leverage without the presence of each of the others. 



On February 12, 1909, the hundredth anniversary foumine- 

 of the birth of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Dar- ^"""^^- 

 win, addresses were given at the Unitarian Club of Zd^ 

 San Francisco on four of the greatest men of the nine- 

 teenth century. Dr. Charles R. Brown gave a eulogy 

 on Lincoln, Dr. Charles Mills Gayley of the Univer- 

 sity of California spoke on Goethe, and Mr. Fairfax 

 Whelan on Bessemer, while I attempted a popular 

 resume of the work and influence of Darwin. From 

 that talk of mine I here quote a few paragraphs from 

 the beginning and the end: 



Just one hundred years ago, on the twelfth day of February, 

 1809, Charles Darwin was born in an English manor house at 



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