PREFACE. 



Evolution : The word is in every mouth. A vague, often an 

 incorrect conception of its meaning in the field of biology and 

 with reference to the origin of Man, has reached the popular mind, 

 and stirred it to further investigation and inquiry. Even in its 

 biological aspects, the doctrine of Evolution is seen to touch the 

 great problems of religion and philosophy — of origin and destiny. 

 But it is beginning to be understood that not alone as an explana- 

 tion of the method whereby living forms have been produced and 

 developed is this doctrine alive with human interest and pregnant 

 with important influences upon human thought and human wel- 

 fare. Evolution, reaching backward, takes hold upon the great 

 cosmic problems of the birth and growth of worlds, the nature of 

 Matter and Spirit, the relation of the phenomenal Universe to its 

 efficient Cause. Beaching forward, it touches and illuminates the 

 pressing problems of ethics and sociology, offering to the careful 

 student wise instruction for his guidance in all the practical 

 affairs of life. 



Evolution, it is said, is not a philosophy, it is not a religion — 

 " it is only a method." But it is a universal method ; the discov- 

 ery and formulation of its law as applied to all the processes of in- 

 organic, organic, social and intellectual development, constitutes 

 the widest generalization of science. It cannot be otherwise, 

 therefore, than that its acceptance should necessitate a reconsid- 

 eration of the fundamental problems of philosophy and religion, 

 as well as a reconstruction of our notions in regard to the perma- 

 nence of species and the origin of' human life. As tersely defined 

 by Brofessor Le Conte, "Evolution is continuous, progressive 

 change, according to certain laws, and by means of resident forces." 

 In the place of miracle it posits law ; instead of creation ex nihilo, 

 it affirms an orderly development resulting from the action of eter- 

 nally-existent forces ; for the old conception of a mechanical uni- 

 verse set in motion by a non-resident Creator, it substitutes that 

 of a vital universe, the "resident forces" of which are symbols of 

 a Bower that is at once immanent and transcendent, — revealed in 

 all its relations to our human consciousness, but by the very 



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