6 REPORT—1905. 
and so justify its temporary existence. We should not, therefore, totally 
reject one or other of two rival theories on the ground that they seem, 
with our present knowledge, mutually inconsistent, for it is likely that 
both may contain important elements of truth. The theories of which 
I shall have to speak hereafter may often appear discordant with one 
another according to our present lights. Yet we must not scruple to 
pursue the several divergent lines of thought to their logical conclusions, 
relying on future discovery to eliminate the false and to reconcile together 
the truths which form part of each of them. 
In the mouths of the unscientific evolution is often spoken of as almost 
synonymous with the evolution of the various species of animals on the 
earth, and this again is sometimes thought to be practically the same 
thing as the theory of Natural Selection. Of course those who are con- 
versant with the history of scientific ideas are aware that a belief in the 
gradual and orderly transformation of Nature, both animate and inanimate, 
is of great antiquity. 
We may liken the facts on et theories of evolution are based to a 
confused heap of beads, from which a keen-sighted searcher after truth 
picks out and strings together a few which happen to catch his eye, as 
possessing certain resemblances. Until recently, theories of evolution in 
both realms of Nature were partial and discontinuous, and the chains 
of facts were correspondingly short and disconnected. At length the 
theory of Natural Selection, by formulating the cause of the divergence 
of forms in the organic world from the parental stock, furnished the 
naturalist with a clue by which he examined the disordered mass of facts 
before him, and he was thus enabled to go far in deducing order where 
chaos had ruled before, but the problem of reducing the heap to perfect 
order will probably baffle the ingenuity of the investigator for ever. 
So illuminating has been this new idea that, as the whole of Nature 
has gradually been re-examined by its aid, thousands of new facts have 
been brought to light, and have been strung in due order on the necklace 
of knowledge. Indeed the transformation resulting from the new point 
of view has been so far-reaching as almost to justify the misapprehension 
of the unscientific as to the date when the doctrines of evolution first 
originated in the mind of man. 
It is not my object, nor indeed am I competent, to examine the extent 
to which the Theory of Natural Selection has needed modification since it 
was first formulated by my father and Wallace. But I am surely justified 
in maintaining that the general principle holds its place firmly as a perma- 
nent acquisition to nie of thought. 
Evolutionary doctrines concerning inanimate nature, although of much 
older date than those which concern life, have been profoundly affected 
by the great impulse of which I have spoken. It has thus come about 
that the origin and history of the chemical elements and of stellar systems 
now occupy a far larger space in the scientific mind than was formerly the 
case. The subject which I shall discuss to-night is the extent to which 
