EVOLUTION IN GENERAL. 



%choIe Man it is sufficient for the present to rank it as 

 a theory, no matter how impressive the conviction be 

 that it is more. Without some hypothesis no work 

 can ever be clone, and, as every one knows, many of 

 the greatest contributions to human knowledge have 

 been made by tlie use of theories either seriously 

 imperfect or demonstrably false. This is the age of 

 the evolution of Evolution. All thoughts that the 

 Evolutionist works with, all theories and generaliza- 

 tions, have been themselves evolved and are now 

 being evolved. Even were his theory perfected its 

 first lesson would be that it was itself but a phase of 

 the Evolution of further opinion, no more fixed than a 

 species, no more final than the theory which it dis- 

 placed. Of all men the Evolutionist, by the very 

 nature of his calling, the mere tools of his craft, his 

 understanding of his hourly shifting place in this 

 always moving and ever more mysterious world, must 

 be humble, tolerant, and undogmatic. 



These, nevertheless, are cold words with which to 

 speak of a Vision — for Evolution is after all a 

 Vision — which is revolutionizing the world of Nature 

 and of thought, and, within living memory, has opened 

 up avenues into the past and vistas into the future 

 such as science has never witnessed before. While 

 many of the details of the theory of Evolution are in 

 the crucible of criticism, and while the field of modern 

 science changes with such rapidity that in almost 

 every department the text-books of ten years ago are 

 obsolete to-day, it is fair to add that no one of these 

 changes, nor all of them together, have touched the 

 general theory itself except to establish its strength, 

 its value, and its universality. Even more remarkable 



