CHAPTEE XL 



The Theory of Organic Evolution. 



The general idea of evolution, like many other 

 great ideas, is essentially simple — that the present 

 is the child of the past and the parent of the future. 

 It is the same as the scientific conception of human 

 history. In human affairs, what seems to the care- 

 less to be quite new is revealed to the student as an 

 antiquity. We see the gradual growth of social 

 organisations, the natural transition from one estab- 

 lished order of things to another slightly different, 

 the transformation of one institution into another, 

 and we formulate the growth, the transition, the 

 transformation in the general concept of historic 

 evolution. A process of Becoming leads to a new 

 phase of Being ; the study of evolution is a study of 

 Werden und VergeJien. 



THE GENERAL IDEA OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION. 



Stated concretely in regard to living creatures, the 

 general doctrine of organic evolution suggests, as 

 we all know, that the plants and animals now around 

 us are the results of natural processes of growth and 

 change working throughout the ages, that the forms 

 we see are the lineal descendants of ancestors on the 

 whole somewhat simpler, that these are descended 



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