An Introduction to a Biology 



part in bringing it about ; and they, likewise, all failed to 

 convince their contemporaries of the fact of evolution. Charles 

 Darwin threw the intelligence of the performers in the evolu- 

 tionary pageant overboard and put forward, as an explana- 

 tion of evolution, the theory of natural selection, which went 

 straight to the unimaginative heart of the mid- Victorian. 



From that time evolution was accepted as intellectual 

 coinage, with " Evolution " on one face and " Natural 

 Selection " on the other face of the coin. From that time 

 evolution became, in the most strictly literal sense of the 

 words, lifeless and hopeless : lifeless, because, according to 

 the theory of natural selection, living things have not evolved 

 by virtue of any of their essentially vital attributes ; and 

 hopeless because, according to the theory of natural selec- 

 tion, no effort of ours can make our children better than their 

 fathers ; and because the only way to fight our most for- 

 midable enemy, disease, is to expose ourselves to the risk 

 of contracting as many diseases as we can in order that 

 those of us who are susceptible to one or more of them may 

 be eliminated. 



Evolution remained this automatic, lifeless thing until 

 1897, when " Life and Habit " appeared and put the breath 

 of life into its nostrils. 



We read " Life and Habit " in the spring of 1909. We 

 had been brought up in the school of Natural Selection ; our 

 lectures on Evolution began with Charles Darwin. Evolu- 

 tion as explained by natural selection was a drab thing in 

 which we had to believe. The change wrought in us by read- 

 ing " Life and Habit " was miraculous. An extraordinary 

 change had also come over the living things we saw. They 

 appeared as they had never appeared before. They wore 

 an uncouth aspect, which was unfamiliar, and yet strangely 

 familiar, to us. They were alive. Evolution from that time 

 became a thing in which it was not a necessity, but a joy, 

 to believe. , 



About a year later the biological library committee of 



