EVOLUTION THE KEY TO NATURE 3 



tion." About the seventeenth century the word 

 began to be used in English for the "unrolling" of 

 the scroll of history, of the fates, etc.; then the 

 unrolling or expanding of anything which had been, 

 as it were, folded or rolled up. The body "evolved" 

 from the germ. A nation, like the Romans, evolved 

 from the pastoral tribe which history represented as 

 its first stage. 



This sort of evolution was going on so obviously 

 all round our grandfathers that one may wonder why 

 they did not perceive that it was a law of nature. 

 For instance, one understood the striped pole outside 

 the barber's shop because the modern barber was 

 evolved from the barber-surgeon of the Middle Ages, 

 who used to put this red pole, with a white bandaging 

 tape wound round it, outside his shop to show that 

 he bled people. One understood why a "gentle- 

 man" had two buttons on the back of his coat and 

 the workman had not, because they were evolved from 

 the mediaeval gentleman, who buttoned his sword 

 there, and the medieval worker, who wore a smock, 

 or at least had no sword. One understood the 

 richness of the English language because it had 

 grown out of a mixture of the tongues of the British, 

 Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans, and other invaders. 

 All history was really part of a science of evolution. 

 All the political struggles of the time were processes of 

 evolution. Every new machine, or fashion in dress, 

 or improvement in the home, was an example of 



