An Introduction to a Biology 



caused by the knowledge of what we are from the fact, now 

 established, that we know riot what we may be. 



.DARWIN AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES l 

 Darwin performed the gigantic task of forcing mankind 

 to believe in evolution. So great was this task that it seems 

 almost too much to expect that the theory by means of 

 which he effected this should be true as well. The mere 

 fact that the theory Natural Selection which attempted 

 to account for evolution could be understood, or, at any 

 rate, was soon accepted, by nearly everybody invites by 

 itself the suggestion that this theory gives a picture of the 

 causes of evolution which, at any rate, is not complete. 

 For it is not as if evolution were a simple matter ; it may 

 be said that we know hardly anything of the factors to 

 which it is due. And the fact that we are all actors in the 

 evolutionary pageant renders it almost impossible for us 

 to visualise the process from a detached standpoint as the 

 master of a pageant does. This brings us to what seems to 

 us to be far and away the most interesting question which 

 can confront the student of life namely, whether evolution 

 is a process of which a simple mechanistic explanation has 

 been discovered ; or whether it is not a mysterious process 

 which we are scarcely able to understand at all yet, but 

 which may, perhaps, be due to deliberate striving on the 

 part of the animals and plants which have taken part and 

 are taking part in it. And many will lean to the latter 

 interpretation, because they find it inconceivable that we 

 should know as much about so vast and complex and close 

 a thing as evolution as we should do if the mechanistic 

 explanation of it by natural selection were true. 



Professor Poulton has presented his view of evolution 

 with such eloquence and enthusiasm that we feel almost 



1 Extract from Review, " Charles Darwin and the Origin of Species," 

 by E. B. Poulton, F.R.S. The Times Literary Supplement, Thursday, 

 November 25th, 1909. 



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