The Meaning of Evolution 



CHAPTER I 

 EVOLUTION BEFORE DARWIN 



EVER since men have been able to think they must 

 have puzzled out for themselves some way of ac- 

 counting for their own beginnings. Every savage 

 tribe with whom we have any intimate acquaintance 

 has some story that accounts for the origin of the 

 tribe at least, and often for the beginning of the 

 world. These stories are handed down from genera- 

 tion to generation and are scarcely questioned in the 

 thought of most men. In early Greece there was a 

 succession of men whom the world calls philosophers. 

 These men thought earnestly and deeply on all kinds 

 of questions. Their method was not our method. 

 The plan of making a long series of observations, 

 before coming to any conclusion, was not the habit 

 of their minds. They reasoned out on general prin- 

 ciples what seemed to them must have been the origin 

 of the world. It is not strange that among these 

 should come, now and then, some one who in some 



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