1896} THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPECIES-MAKING 455 
naturalists, the things which were to be seen. If the forms of 
life were the entities, then the units must have one common 
designation ; and the technical expression applied to them was the 
word species. To make names and descriptions for these units 
was really to know nature; so there arose a desire to make 
inventories of nature, and the organic creation was speedily cut 
up into coordinate units. All this resulted in a species of versi- 
fication or paragraphing of nature; and it would not be unfair 
to say that, in this conception, the species is the organic para- 
graph, 
The reader will now perceive that the two attitudes of mind 
which are sketched in these two paragraphs are antagonistic and 
incompatible. If one is true, the other is necessarily untrue. 
Evolution, as a method, is either true or it is not true. It cannot 
behalf true. If evolution is true, then the forms of life are not 
the units or entities in the organic creation ; they are the dis- 
joined remaining results of the world-long process of elimina- 
tion, the incidental outcomes of a vicarious history. In some 
lines of ascent, notably in the mammals, these forms are, to be 
sure, exceedingly well marked, but these only attest the more 
strongly to the survival of the most specialized types. In other 
Words, there are no species as understood by Ray and Linnzus 
and Cuvier and the older naturalists. 
It is unnecessary to argue for the truth of evolution before 
this constituency ; although I suspect that there are still botan- 
ists Who accept evolution as true only in those particular groups 
which they can observe some direct evidences of it, without 
Seeing that such limitation of its action is a denial of its univer- 
sality and therefore of its truth as a principle. Yet I suppose 
that I should not meet strong opposition if I say that naturalists 
Now regard species as the final, that is, the present, adjustment 
of forms of life to circumstances; and yet the greater number 
of naturalists seem still practically to look upon the species as 
~ organic unit. Even the definitions in our latest and best 
lexicons insist upon the intrinsic merits of species. The Century 
“onary defines a species, in biology, to be ‘‘that which is 
