i EVOLUTION THEORY u 



I cannot do better than quote Prof. Huxley's own 

 words. It "supposes that at any comparatively late 

 period of past time, our imaginary spectator [supposed 

 to be a witness of the history of the earth] would 

 meet with a state of things very similar to that which 

 now obtains, but that the likeness of the past to the 

 present would gradually become less and less, in pro- 

 portion to the remoteness of his period of observation 

 from the present day ; that the existing distribution 

 of mountains and plains, of rivers and seas, would 

 show itself to be the product of a slow process of 

 natural change operating upon more and more widely 

 different antecedent conditions of the mineral frame- 

 work of the earth ; until at length, in place of that 

 framework he would behold only a vast nebulous 

 mass, representing the constituents of the sun and of 

 the planetary bodies. Preceding the forms of life 

 which now exist, our observer would see animals and 

 plants, not identical with them, but like them ; in- 

 creasing their difference with their antiquity, and at 

 the same time, becoming simpler and simpler, until 

 finally the world of life would present nothing but 

 that undifferentiated protoplasmic matter which, so 

 far as our present knowledge goes, is the common 

 foundation of all vital activity." l 



To put it briefly : the evolutionary hypothesis sup- 



1 American Addresses. Three Lectures on Evolution, p. 10. 



