August 26, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



245 



the work of these men, supplemented by 

 the labors of Spencer and of Huxley, and 

 the powerful influence of the botanists 

 Hooker and Gray, all of whom contributed 

 their life-long toil and efforts in laying the 

 foundation stones of the theory, which has 

 brought about its general acceptance among 

 thinking men. It is these naturalists, some 

 of them happily still living, who have 

 worked out the principle of evolution from 

 the generalized to the specialized, from the 

 simple to the complex, from chaos to cosmos. 



The doctrine of evolution has been firmly 

 established on a scientific basis by many 

 workers in all departments of biology, and 

 found not only to withstand criticism from 

 every quarter, but to be an indispensable 

 tool for the investigator. The strongest 

 proof of its genuine value as a working 

 theory is that it has, under the light 

 shed by it, opened up many an avenue 

 of inquiry leading into new fields of re- 

 search. It is based on the inductive 

 method, the observation and arrangement 

 of a wide series of facts. Moreover, it ex- 

 plains a vast complex of facts, and enables 

 us to make predictions, the true test of a 

 scientific theory. Biology is not an exact 

 science, hence the theory is not capable of 

 demonstration like a problem in mathe- 

 matics, but is based on probabilities, the cir- 

 cumstantial evidence being apparently con- 

 vincing to every candid, well-trained mind. 



The methods and results of natural 

 science, based as they now are on evolu- 

 tional grounds, have, likewise, appealed to 

 the historian, the philologist, the sociol- 

 ogist, and the student of comparative re- 

 ligion, whose labors begin with investiga- 

 tions into the origins. 



It goes without saying that, thanks to the 

 initiative of the above-named zoologists, 

 every department of intellectual work and 

 thought has been rejuvenated and rehabili- 

 tated by the employment of the modern 

 scientific method. All inquiring minds ap- 



preciate the fact that, throughout the whole 

 realm of nature, inorganic, as well as or- 

 ganic, physical, mental, moral and spiritual, 

 there was once a beginning, and that from 

 a germ, by a gradual process of differen- 

 tiation or specialization, the complex fabric 

 of creation has, by the operation of natural 

 laws and forces, been brought into being. 

 All progress is dependent on this evolution- 

 ary principle, which involves variation, 

 adaptation, the disuse or rejection of the un- 

 fit, the use or survival of the fittest, together 

 with the mechanical principle of the utmost 

 economy of material. 



Though the human mind has its limita- 

 tions, and the chief arguments for evolution 

 have been drawn from our observations of 

 the history of our own planet, and of the 

 life existing upon it, the nebular hypothesis 

 teaches us that the same process has de- 

 determined the origin of other worlds than 

 ours and applies in fact to all the other 

 members of our solar system, while with 

 little doubt the principles may be extended 

 to the entire universe. 



At all events, evolutionarj^ methods of 

 thinking have now become a second nature 

 with philosophic, synthetic minds, and to 

 such any other view is inconceivable. We 

 teach evolution in our colleges and univer- 

 sities, and the time is rapidly approaching, 

 and in some instances has already come, 

 when nature studies, and the facts of biology 

 forming the grounds of the evolutionary 

 idea, will be taught in our primary and 

 secondary schools. 



The rapidity with which evolutionary 

 conceptions have taken root and spread may 

 be compared to the rankness of growth of a 

 prepotent plant or animal on being intro- 

 duced into a new territory where it is free 

 from competition. It has, indeed, swept 

 everything before it, occupying a field of 

 thought which hitherto had been unworked 

 by human intelligence. 



The immediate eifect, and a very happy 



