12 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



biological processes and controlling influences which have shaped the 

 evolutionary histories of Man and ape. The evolution of new types of 

 Man or of ape is one thing, and the evolution of new types of motor cars 

 is another, yet for the purposes of clear thinking it will repay us to use 

 the one example to illustrate the other. In the evolution of motor 

 vehicles Darwin's law of Selection has prevailed ; there has been severe 

 competition and the types which have answered best to the needs and 

 tastes of the public have survived. The public has selected on two 

 "rounds — first for utility, thus illustrating Darwin's law of Natural 

 Selection, and secondly because of appearance's sake ; for, as most people 

 know, a new car has to satisfy not only the utilitarian demands of its 

 prospective master but also the aesthetic tastes of its prospective 

 mistress, therein illustrating Darwin's second law — the law of Sexual 

 Selection. That selection, both utilitarian and aesthetic, is producing an 

 effect on modern races of mankind and in surviving kinds of ape, as 

 Darwin supposed, cannot well be questioned. In recent centuries the 

 inter-racial competition amongst men for the arable lands of the world 

 is keener than in any known period of human history. 



The public has selected its favoured types of car, but it has had no 



direct hand in designing and producing modifications and improvements 



which have appeared year after year. To understand how 



Production such modifications are produced the enquirer must enter a 



of New TVD6S 



" factory and not only watch artisans shaping and fitting parts 



together but also visit the designer's office. In this way an enquirer will 

 obtain a glimpse of the machinery concerned in the evolution of motor 

 cars. If we are to understand the machinery which underlies the 

 evolution of Man and of ape, we have to enter the ' factories ' where 

 they are produced — look within the womb and see the ovum being 

 transformed into an embryo, the embryo into a foetus, and the foetus 

 into a babe. After birth we may note infancy passing into childhood, 

 childhood into adolescence, adolescence into maturity, and maturity into 

 old age. Merely to register the stages of change is not enough ; to under- 

 stand the controlling machinery we have to search out and uncover the 

 processes which are at work within developing and growing things and 

 the influences which co-ordinate and control all the processes of develop- 

 ment and of growth. When we have discovered the machinery of 

 development and of growth we shall also know the machinery of Evolution, 

 for they are the same. 



