102 EVOLUTION AND DOGMA. 



a word, species, genera, families, etc., exist as 

 thoughts ; individuals as facts." * 



Species in the Making. 



But while some of the old school who are not 

 naturalists, still subscribe to these or similar views, 

 and while a few, possibly even among naturalists, 

 may yet be found who entertain like notions, the 

 great majority of working naturalists have entirely 

 discarded the traditional idea of species, as some- 

 thing fixed and unchangeable, and substituted in 

 its stead the idea of a species which is variable and 

 transmutable. For evolutionists, all such variable 

 and doubtful forms as those I have indicated are but 

 " species in the making," which become definite in 

 proportion as certain varieties become especially 

 adapted to their environment, and become isolated 

 by the dying out of the intermediate forms. From 

 the evolutionary standpoint both species and classi- 

 fication have a significance which is not only ex- 

 cluded from the creationist's view, but which is 

 absolutely incompatible with it. By the aid of the 

 Evolution hypothesis, too, mysteries are solved which 



1 Cf. " Essay on Classification," chap, i , sec. i , and "Amer- 

 ican Journal of Science," July, 1860, p. 143. Very few naturalists, 

 even among Agassiz' predecessors, among those, namely, who 

 like himself, were from conviction special creationists, would, I 

 think, subscribe to this statement. The majority of them, I am 

 disposed to believe, regarded all divisions above species as purely 

 conventional. For, even in pre- Darwinian days, as Romanes 

 well observes, " the scientifically orthodox doctrine was, that 

 although species were to be regarded as fixed units, bearing the 

 stamp of a special creation, all the higher taxonomic divisions 

 were to be considered as what may be termed the artificial cre- 

 ation of naturalists themselves.""' Darwin and After Darwin," 

 vol. I, p. 20. 



