138 The Bible of Nature 



certain amount of evolution going on under our 

 eyes, and that not confined to Mr. Burbank's 

 garden or the breeders' pens. We extend the idea 

 to the past and find that it works well. 



Every one knows how Darwin with sublime 

 patience accumulated evidence of evolution (a) 

 from the distribution of animals in space; (6) from 

 their successive appearance in time; (c) from 

 actual changes observed in domestication, culti- 

 vation, and in nature; (d) from facts of anatomical 

 structure, such as homologous and vestigial or- 

 gans, and (e] from the abbreviated recapitulation 

 of the past which seems to occur in individual de- 

 velopment. But magistral as his work was, it did 

 not, and could not, demonstrate the doctrine of de- 

 scent; it simply gave what one may call a cumula- 

 tive justification by showing how well the formula 

 fitted a vast series of facts. Thus the phrase " evi- 

 dences of evolution," except as applied to what we 

 actually see going on, is not altogether appropriate. 

 Every differentiation and every adaptation of struct- 

 ure or of function may be interpreted as a product, 

 and may thus become "an evidence of evolution." 



Validity of Scientific Interpretation. It is necessary 

 at this point to interpolate a general considera- 

 tion. The Theory of Descent tacitly makes the 

 assumption the basal hope of all biology that 

 it is not only legitimate but promiseful to try to in- 

 terpret scientifically the history of life upon the 



