1VA TURE AND SCOPE OF E VOL UTION. 19 



to the Evolution of the earth and its inhabitants, and 

 only incidentally shall I refer to cosmic Evolution. 

 Indeed, properly speaking, the Evolution of which I 

 shall treat shall be limited almost entirely to organic 

 Evolution, or the Evolution of the plants and ani- 

 mals which live or have lived on this earth of ours. 

 All references, therefore, to the Evolution of the 

 earth itself from its primeval nebulous state, and to 

 the Evolution of organic from inorganic matter, will 

 be mostly by way of illustration, and in order to 

 show that there is no breach of continuity between 

 organic Evolution, which is my theme, and inorganic 

 or cosmic Evolution. 



Literature of Evolution. 



The subject is a vast one, and to treat it ade- 

 quately would require far more space than I have at 

 my disposal. It has indeed a literature and a bibli- 

 ography of its own a literature whose proportions 

 are already stupendous, and are daily, and with 

 amazing rapidity, becoming more collossal. For 

 the past third of a century, since the publication of 

 Darwin's " Origin of Species," it has been uppermost 

 in the minds of everyone given to thinking on seri- 

 ous subjects. Everybody talks about Evolution, and 

 more write about it than about any other one subject. 



More than five thousand distinct works, relating 

 to Goethe, who died in 1832, have, it is estimated, 

 already been printed, and additions are continually 

 being made to this enormous number. Peignot, who 

 wrote in 1822, declared that up to his day more than 

 eighty thousand distinct works had appeared on the 



