EVIDENCE FOR EVOLUTION 7 



ever-increasing reward to scientific research. For 

 organic life, warmth, air, light, moisture, food, are 

 the mightiest impulses which determine the manifold 

 variety of the forms of living beings. l When from 

 organic form we pass to the ethical character in 

 man, thought proves a grander agency by which a 

 nobler life unfolds in the world. Through all this, 

 the law of heredity provides at once for transmission 

 of variations, and for further advance. Nature, taken 

 in its highest aspects, appears as a living unity, with a 

 history ever unfolding in fresh acquisitions. Scientific 

 controversies, however wide in import, have at least a 

 common basis in unchangeable laws of progress, ever 

 deepening their impress on the face of Nature. 

 Darwin and Wallace, Weisinann and Eiiner are 

 severed on points of large significance ; but they are 

 agreed as to the main laws of acquisition, and of in 

 heritance securing the world s advance. 



The great lines of evidence for Evolution of organism 

 are broadly marked. The laws of growth for in 

 dividual life come first in importance ; persistence of 

 species bears its testimony for inheritance ; modifica 

 tions of species tell of the moulding power of environ 

 ment ; the records of artificial selection, under the 

 advantages of domestication, throw a broader light 

 over the provisions of Nature, whether the records tell 

 of enduring, or of temporary, deviations from the 

 normal type. When human intelligence comes on 

 the field, selecting and regulating results in animal 

 life, we see still more vividly that progress is the law 

 of Nature. 



1 Organic Evolutionas the Result of the Inheritance of Acquired Char 

 acters, by Dr. G. Eimer, translated by J. T. Cunningham, p. 22. 



