EVIDENCE FOR EVOLUTION 9 



shadowed by the general. Not easily is a full sight of 

 cosmic causes obtained. Deliverance from danger of 

 hasty induction must be worked out by persistent re 

 search, and unshrinking criticism. Division of labour 

 among naturalists, will provide for attention to every 

 order of life in our further study of the scheme of 

 existence. Advance in science deepens our con 

 viction of the marvellous intricacy of Nature s 

 methods. Slowly we shall come to learn how tem 

 porary uses are served, while some advance is being 

 made towards a general end. As individuals grow, 

 so the whole world of organic forms has grown up 

 from simple beginnings; 1 and even so, a complex 

 system of law is now working for much grander 

 results in ages to come. 



If we are truly to know, and, thereafter accurately 

 to interpret according to knowledge, we must be 

 contented with a slow elaboration of results. While 

 analogies supplied by individual growth are valuable, 

 the complex conditions affecting life over the wide 

 world carry us far beyond analogical inference. The 

 conception which a theory of Evolution has made 

 possible, needs to be sustained by deeper research as 

 to the cosmic causes, and to be guarded specially 

 against the fallacy which would find in the less the 

 cause of the greater. Too readily do we speak of the 

 lower producing the higher, tending to overlook the 

 primary truth, that only the mature life produces the 

 germ, organic life thus testifying by law of heredity 

 that the greater produces the less. However sur 

 prising it be that a microscopic germ contains within 

 it the promise of the normal characteristics of the 



1 Organic Evolution, Eimer. 



