ORIGIN OF THE PROBLEM 



17 



preserved, while those similar to the present ones, but 

 which mostly lived together with them under the 

 same conditions, are generally rare. 



The objection that most fossils lie at the bottom of 

 the sea and cannot be examined by us at all, does 

 not help us out of this difficulty. Thereby we could 

 ' demonstrate ' everything. 



We are therefore inclined to accept a connection [ 

 by descent between the present and the fossil organisms, \ 

 because this assumption is the more natural provided \ 

 that the observation of the present organisms does not 

 exclude such an hypothesis. 



The object of earnest scientific investigation would 

 be to examine more closely the present forms of organic 

 life as regards their varietal capacity and to follow up I 

 the evolutionary series of the separate groups and no 

 longer to maintain in a merely general way a genetic- ' 

 connection as a postulate. This work, especially the 

 palseontological side of it, has been, however, only 

 resumed in recent years on really unprejudiced lines. 

 To this we owe the really natural further development 

 of the question of descent which for some decades had 

 been interrupted by hypotheses of a merely general 

 character. 



