X Summary of Contents 



order which pervades it" — Yet there is persistence amid 

 change — A species is "a sort of visible fugue wandering 

 about a central theme" — "The organic world as a whole 

 is a perpetual flux of changing types," and yet there is a 

 remarkable stability of type — The drama of animal life, 

 its inexhaustible marvels — Migrations of birds and eels as 

 illustrations — Adaptations — "Wherever you tap organic 

 nature it seems to flow with purpose" — The old special 

 arguments from design are replaceable by "a wider tele- 

 ology, based upon the fundamental proposition of evolu- 

 tion" — Progress the crowning wonder — In Lotze's words, 

 "There is the unity of an onward advancing melody" — 

 The omnipresence of beauty In finished and normal things 

 — Is any one thing more wonderful than another? — Walt 

 Whitman's doctrine — The wonder of a pebble, a flower in 

 the wall, an earthworm — ^The sense of wonder and the 

 scientific mood — ^The relations of the practical, emotional, 

 and scientific moods — ^The sense of wonder and the re- 

 sults of science — Kant's famous passage on wonder — 

 Emerson's "Excelsior." 



II. THE HISTORY OF THINGS 



The antiquity of things — ^The age of the Earth must be 

 reckoned in millions of years — ^Things have changed with 

 the times — The nebular or meteoritic hypothesis — The 

 history of a star — Stages in the history of the Earth — 

 Sculpturing of scenery — The hand of life upon the Earth 

 — Age of the Earth — Inorganic evolution — Interpretation 

 of the past — Scientific interpretation is not in the strict 

 sense explanation — It is redescription in terms of the sim- 

 plest possible formulae — William of Occam's razor — But 

 the common denominator of physical science [Matter, 

 Energy, Ether] is not self-explanatory — Admittedly, science 

 starts with a great deal "given" — Development and evolu- 



