238 THE LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE 



scientific as Spencerian philosophy would have us be- 

 lieve. 



The doctrine of evolution, as a strictly scientific law, 

 states merely that the different species of animals and 

 plants were not created as distinct types but that they 

 have gradually changed by a progressive modification 

 until each existing species is the last surviving branch 

 or twig of the biological tree. Evidently, then, all life 

 can be traced back, if we could gather up the tangled 

 and broken skein of life, either to one or at least to a 

 few prototypes. Now the law of evolution takes no 

 account of good or bad, of high or low, or of the 

 method by which one species has changed to another. 

 According to it, each type has maintained its continued 

 existence simply because certain of its attributes have 

 given it an advantage over its competitors. From 

 observation we find that those types, we think to be 

 primitive, are simpler in construction and functions 

 than are those we suppose to be later. But it is by 

 no means a universal law that simple types change 

 to complex ones, witness the persistence of microbes 

 and bacilli. The law of evolution is thus a scientific 

 law which attempts to generalize a set of phenomena 

 observed objectively and has nothing to do with ethics 

 or what I have called character. 



What may be called the ethical aspect of evolution 

 has been injected into it by hypothetical or metaphysical 

 reasoning. Darwin and his successors, generally, have 



