^% 





The A B C of Evolution 



CHAPTER I 



EVOLUTION THE KEY TO NATURE 



If you want to understand what evolution is, and why 

 some scientific men — who are not usually poetic — 

 have compared it to a sun rising in the nineteenth 

 century to illumine the darkness of nature, try to put 

 yourself in the position of some thoughtful man of 

 the days of George IV. There was already quite a 

 respectable science in those days. There was a 

 Royal Society. There were geologists and chemists 

 and astronomers. For two hundred years English- 

 men of great ability had been working hard to attain 

 the kind of knowledge which we call ** science"; that 

 is to say, knowledge based as carefully a^ possible on 

 actual observation. 



Yet nature as a whole, and myriads of separate 

 things in nature, were so dark and unintelligible that 

 we may really say that they awaited the rising of the 

 sun. Your grandfather, supposing that he were of a 

 thoughtful turn, would ask endless questions to which 



