464 KINSHIP AND ADAPTATION 



individuals confronted by alternatives which ultimately de- 

 cides whether a given path shall Ije followed or not. That is 

 to say, external conditions and previous decisions while they 

 restrict the range of choice yet permit of choosing. Of course 

 the reader will not suppose that our imaginary examples 

 afford any real proof of volition in plants or animals. If 

 either do have the power of choice we cannot hope to prove 

 it any more than we can prove that we have such a power 

 ourselves. What has been said is meant merely to show how 

 one who believes that every living thing can choose, may 

 think of evolutionary processes in terms of his belief. With 

 this bare hint of a way of avoiding the pitfalls which await 

 any purely mechanical explanation or any theory of evolu- 

 tion by chance, the reader must be left to make such further 

 applications of the hypothesis as he can. We may call this 

 view, which refuses to regard any living creature as a mere 

 mechanism, Evolution by Choice, since for want of a better 

 name it will serve to emphasize the essence of the belief, 

 which is that a certain measure of self-control is inherent 

 in every organism and that upon this inscrutable power 

 hangs the destiny of the living world. 



171. Evolution in general. The creation of living things 

 by successive steps, one growing out of another, is viewed 

 by modern science as part of a gradual process of world- 

 making which is understood to proceed in a somewhat similar 

 manner. That is to say, the entire universe is believed to 

 have evolved and to be evolving according to laws of 

 change which have been the same from the beginning and 

 will be the same to the end, or forever, if the process be 

 endless. 



The view most widely accepted is that from a vast nebula 

 or vapor-like mass of incandescent star-dust, like those now 

 seen in various parts of the heavens, our solar system for 

 example wdth its central sun, its whirling planets and their 

 moons, has slowly. developed during countless ages, through 

 the agency of gravitation acting together with other proper- 

 ties of matter. During the course of its evolution each sphere 

 is supposed to pass from a ne])ulous condition to a ball of 

 glowing Hquid, which, as it cools forms at first a solid crust, 



