EVOLUTION 

 THE MASTER-KEY 



I 



INTRODUCTORY THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 



THAT "nothing is constant but change" is no 

 new saying; but it may be taken as expressing, in 

 a somewhat uncritical fashion, the essential state- 

 ment of the philosophy which will ever be dis- 

 tinctively associated with the nineteenth century 

 and the name of Herbert Spencer the philosophy 

 of evolution. Apparent exceptions will occur to 

 every one. Here is a man who believes that the 

 British empire or the solar system or the suprem- 

 acy of Shakespeare or Beethoven will last forever. 

 Of a higher order is he who believes that, at any 

 rate, certain intellectual propositions something 

 said by Hegel or Plato or Newton are forever 

 perdurable. One such declared that the synthetic 

 philosophy would assuredly endure throughout all 

 coming time, but its author rebuked him with the 

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