A DAY IN A QUARRY. 97 



ignoramus by the more ill-mannered of the other 

 side, and, as one doesn't care to be thought a fool, 

 I prefer to ask my scientific inquisitors to furnish 

 me with a careful definition of what they mean 

 by evolution, by which piece of subtlety I mostly 

 manage to evade an answer. I have really tried 

 honestly to find out what is meant by evolution, 

 and have left no influential book unexamined ; but I 

 find there are almost as many opinions as there are 

 evolutionists, and so I have come to the conclusion 

 that there are no real evolutionists, but that all 

 who are so styled are simply on their way to the 

 truth which they have not yet reached. The 

 extreme forms of evolutionism which were rampant 

 a score of years ago are fast dying out, and perhaps 

 you and I may live to see the very word almost 

 forgotten. Already the myth of spontaneous 

 generation is given up, even by Haeckel ; and, 

 moreover, man is declared by all ' who are com- 

 petent to judge ' as Professor Huxley is fond of 

 saying when writing polemically as being of an 

 order distinct from, and higher than, the rest of 

 creation. Geology and zoology prove nothing yet, 

 except that we need to revise our notions about 

 species, and that our natural history classifications 

 have] been made upon wrong principles, so that 

 varieties have been elevated into more important 

 groups. There is no ground for believing that all 

 types of plants and animals have developed from 

 one archetype, or that both sexes have, by ordinary 

 processes, evolved from one individual. The whole 

 question of development and degeneration is at 



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