WHAT EVOLUTION MEANS. 



If any person devoted his time to the 

 correction of popular errors, there is no 

 probability that he would have any spare 

 moments for eating or sleeping. The se 

 rious aspect of the present condition of 

 popular knowledge, however, is the ap 

 parent absence of desire upon the part 

 of many young people to grasp the princi 

 ples of natural science. I am not exag 

 gerating when I say that there are plenty 

 of fairly educated persons in every large 

 city who deny that man is an animal, and 

 who insist that a whale must be a fish, be 

 cause it lives in the sea. 



Everybody professes to be aware in a 

 sort of unconscious way that the theory 

 of Evolution was invented by Mr. Dar 

 win, and patented by Mr. Spencer, the 

 most important points in the doctrine be 

 ing that all men are descended from mon 

 keys which had lost their tails, that the 

 fittest survived, and that there is a "miss 

 ing link" between man and his ancestors. 



These ideas have little foundation in 

 fact. Darwin no more discovered Evolu 

 tion than Edison discovered electricity ; 

 we are not descended from any existing 

 ape, with or without a tail, and no compe 

 tent person ever asserted that we were ; 

 and there are good reasons for saying 

 that such palaeontological "links" as are 

 missing are not of the greatest possible 

 importance. In short, whatever is evolu 

 tionary in the popular mind, is a bur 

 lesque upon the evolutionist's true opin 

 ions. 



Charles Darwin was born in 1809, on 

 the same day as Lincoln, but, long before 

 Darwin's time, evolution had become a 

 recognized force in science. Kant, who 

 lived from 1724 to 1804, and Laplace 

 (1749-1827) had worked out the develop 

 ment of the sun and the planets from 

 white-hot gas. Lyell (1797-1875) had 

 worked out the evolution of the earth's 

 surface to its present condition ; and La 

 marck (1744-1829) had shown that there 

 is evidence of the descent of all animals, 

 as well as all plants, from a few ancestors 

 by gradual modification. Again, Her 



bert Spencer, during Darwin's lifetime, 

 began to work out the growth of mind 

 from the most simple beginnings to the 

 highest development of human thought. 



The philosophies of the ancients were 

 all of them founded upon limited obser 

 vation ; they were merely speculative 

 fancy-pictures evolved from the author's 

 own consciousness. Modern science, 

 however, is of quite a different character. 

 It has relegated certain fundamental 

 propositions to a region called "the Un 

 knowable" (this means at present un 

 knowable), and it permits everybody to 

 explain these propositions by means of 

 any hypotheses which may occur to him. 

 In other words, modern science does not 

 deal with such phenomena as are at the 

 present day outside the range of the hu 

 man intellect ; and I venture to warn the 

 reader that speculation concerning mat 

 ters upon which w r e have as yet no scien 

 tific data is waste of time. Modern 1 science 

 is founded upon investigation and obser 

 vation, and the evidence is 1 always weigh 

 ed as carefully and as impartially as are 

 the statements of witnesses in a law court. 



One naturally asks : "What is Evolu 

 tion ?" "Continuous change according to 

 certain fixed laws," is a reply which may 

 have some value, although it is quite in 

 sufficient. A technical definition, given 

 by Mr. Spencer, is as follows : 



"An integration of matter and con 

 comitant dissipation of motion, during 

 which the matter passes from an indefin 

 ite, incoherent heterogeneity, to a defin 

 ite, coherent homogeneity, and during 

 which the retained motion undergoes a 

 parallel transformation." Anybody who 

 will think about this definition will be able 

 to appreciate its meaning, provided a 

 good dictionary is at hand. 



Evolution is not another word for. De 

 velopment, and Mr. Spencer has care 

 fully distinguished the one from the 

 other ; but the details are too technical for 

 notice in this paper. Evolution may be 

 regarded as "a general term for the his 

 tory of the steps by which any living be- 



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