4 DARWINISM AND PHILOSOPHY 



understand the long dominant idea against which it 

 is a protest. 



Consider how men were impressed by the facts 

 of life. Their eyes fell upon certain things slight 

 in bulk, and frail in structure. To every appear 

 ance, these perceived things were inert and passive. 

 Suddenly, under certain circumstances, these 

 things henceforth known as seeds or eggs or 

 germs begin to change, to change rapidly in size, 

 form, and qualities. Rapid and extensive changes 

 occur, however, in many things as when wood is 

 touched by fire. But the changes in the living 

 thing are orderly ; they are cumulative ; they tend 

 constantly in one direction ; they do not, like other 

 changes, destroy or consume, or pass fruitless into 

 wandering flux ; they realize and fulfil. Each suc 

 cessive stage, no matter how unlike its predecessor, 

 preserves its net effect and also prepares the way 

 for a fuller activity on the part of its successor. In 

 living beings, changes do not happen as they seem 

 to happen elsewhere, any which way; the earlier 

 changes are regulated in view of later results. 

 This progressive organization does not cease till 

 there is achieved a true final term, a r\o? 9 a com 

 pleted, perfected end. This final form exercises 

 in turn a plenitude of functions, not the least note 

 worthy of which is production of germs like those 

 from which it took its own origin, germs capable 

 of the same cycle of self-fulfilling activity. 



