4 EVOLUTION THE KEY TO NATURE 



evolution. Our fathers were painfully familiar with 

 the use of weapons; and every museum put clearly 

 before their eyes "the evolution of weapons." 



It is clear to us now that they needed only to 

 believe that everything had similarly grown, and they 

 would find numbers of mysterious things lit up. If 

 man had grown from a non-human type of animal, 

 just as the modern Englishman had grown out of the 

 Druidic Briton, it explained any number of puzzling 

 features. If the flowers had grown to be what they 

 are, and some had grown more rapidly than others, 

 one understood the variety of nature. If the hills 

 and fiords and valleys had been under the shaping 

 forces of nature for hundreds of thousands of years, 

 the face of the earth could be gradually explained. 

 The English race, scattered over the world, was easily 

 understood. It had a common root in mediaeval 

 England, and its later growth and dispersion might 

 be read in history. Suppose that all the animals and 

 plants of the world likewise had a common root, and 

 had been growing and branching out, like a great 

 oak, for millions of years ! There was the great key : 

 a key that would unlock the secrets of stars, and 

 flowers, and oysters, and social forms. 



It is hardly necessary to recall how it was that 

 until recent times this simple fact was not appre- 

 ciated. In many previous ages thoughtful men had 

 drawn the natural conclusion that all the things in 

 the world had grown. Numbers of the Greek 



