22 THE BIOC08MOS GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



of the ages? Is Evolution the finality? 

 Probably not. Undoubtedly it has come to 

 stay; a spiritual treasure once gained is never 

 wholly lost. Even the atom, first conceived 

 and stated in the old Greek world, has found 

 a new life in our modern science after a mil- 

 lennial subsidence. Still nobody can now be 

 satisfied with the Universe as atomic, except 

 by a kind of reversion to the thought of an 

 age long .since past. Such relapses, by the 

 way, are not so uncommon. But the problem 

 is whether Evolution itself is going to evolve 

 and thus become a stage of itself. Is it some- 

 how to transcend itself through its own inner 

 movement and bring forth something quite 

 different? The Eighteenth Century was a 

 negative, revolutionary Century, battering 

 down the past, as may be seen in its acme and 

 most typical manifestation, the French Revo- 

 lution. But it evolved quite its opposite, the 

 Nineteenth Century, which is essentially posi- 

 tive and evolutionary, conserving and renew- 

 ing the past, yet with anarchic and destruc- 

 tive seams running through it everywhere, the 

 inheritance of a former time. If Revolution 

 evolved Evolution the negation undoing it- 

 self what will Evolution evolve as its suc- 

 cessor, perchance in our Twentieth Century? 



It should be emphasized here that Darwin 

 more than any other man made Evolution the 



