104 ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



Academy. Some of these photographs show the 

 perfect modelling and complete reproduction of 

 surface-detail which the old master of Knossos — 

 perhaps Dsedalos himself — achieved when treating 

 the limbs of his models. Even in the photo- 

 graphs it is possible to observe the disposition of 

 the superficial muscles of the forearm, for instance, 

 and even the disposition of the subcutaneous veins. 

 But every detail I could detect was familiar : there 

 was no single feature that may not be observed in 

 any forearm of to-day, nor was any modern feature 

 missing in these Cretan forearms, the precise sur- 

 face-anatomy of which has been thus permanently 

 recorded by the sculptor's art. Now the approxi- 

 mate date assigned by Dr. Evans to these statuettes 

 is about two thousand years before Christ; so that, 

 in four thousand years, the surface-characters of 

 the limbs of man have undergone no change. 

 It seems not improbable that we shall never 

 be able to obtain any evidence, as to these char- 

 acters, older than that which Dr. Evans has 

 unearthed. 



Having seen that many organic forms tend to 

 persist unchanged throughout long epochs, we may 

 further observe a still more serious objection to 

 the popular misinterpretation of evolution — the fact 

 that many animal and vegetable species can be 

 proved to have degenerated. 1 In the familiar 

 barnacle (Lepas anatifera) we have a most striking 



1 "Progress" is a term which has reference merely to a human 

 ideal. No cosmic or universal meaning can be attached to it. 

 When we use the term degeneration, we indicate merely such a 

 change as carries a species further from our ideal. 



