892 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VIII. No. 208. 



problem may fit the lock which seals the 

 greater. 



In the second place, the two subjects are 

 historically associated. So long as men be- 

 lieved that species are distinct creations, no 

 philosophy of evolution could have gained 

 general acceptance. By convincing all 

 thoughtful persons that species have a 

 history which may be studied bj^ scientific 

 methods, Darwin led many who would not 

 otherwise have given it a hearing, to treat 

 the new philosophy with respect, but nat- 

 ural science is not 'philosophy,' notwith- 

 standing this intimate historical connection 

 between the proof that species are mutable 

 and the spread of belief in the ' Philosophj'^ 

 of Evolution.' I have selected the passage 

 which I have put at the head of this chap- 

 ter in order to show that the view of the 

 matter which is here set forth is not new, 

 even among advanced biologists. 



Huxley's attitude will, no doubt, be a 

 surprise to many who think they have read 

 his books with diligence. He continually 

 calls himself an ' Evolutionist,' and he can 

 hardly blame a reader who, failing to draw 

 nice distinctions, holds him to be one of the 

 chief pillars in the temple of the new phil- 

 osophy. Some confusion may be permitted 

 to those who remember his public lectures 

 on ' Evolution,' his essays with the same 

 title, and his declaration that the work of 

 his life has involved him ' in an endless 

 series of battles and skirmishes over evo- 

 lution.' 



It is easy for one who understands his 

 true position to see that his essays lend no 

 countenance to the opinion that he has ever 

 been or sought to be either a pillar or a dis- 

 ciple of any system of philosophy, for he 

 has never ceased from affirming his igno- 

 rance of many of the subjects which j)hilos- 

 ophj' seeks to handle. 



His evolution is not a system of philos- 

 ophy, but part of the system of science. It 

 deals with history — with the phenomenal 



world — and not with the question what 

 may or may not lie behind it. 



During the last half century natural 

 science has become historical. We have 

 opened and learned to read a new chapter 

 in the records of the past. The attributes 

 of living things, which seemed to the older 

 naturalists to be complete and independent 

 in themselves, have pi'oved to have a his- 

 tory which can be studied by the methods 

 of science. They have been found to be 

 steps in a long sequence of events as or- 

 derly and discoverable as the events which 

 are studied by the astronomer or the geol- 

 ogist. 



The cultivation of natural science in this 

 historical field, and the discovery that the 

 present order of living things, including 

 conscious, thinking, ethical man, has fol- 

 lowed after an older and simpler state of 

 nature, is not ' philosophy,' but science. It 

 involves no more belief in the teachings of 

 any system of philosophy than does the 

 knowledge that we are the children of our 

 parents and the parents of our children ; 

 but it is what Huxley means by ' evolu- 

 tion.'* 



His lectures on ' Evolution ' deal with 

 paleontology, and narrate facts which are 

 found in every text-book on the subject; 

 but natural science, as it is taught in the 

 text-books on botany and zoology and em- 

 bryology and paleontology, is, most as- 

 suredly, no ' Philosophy of Evolution.' It 

 fell to Huxley to fight and win a battle for 

 science ; and while he himself calls it a 

 battle for evolution, his use of the word 

 need mislead none, although it has misled 

 many. 



One word in its time plays many parts, 

 and the word ' evolution ' has had many 

 meanings. To-day, in popular estimation, 

 an evolutionist is not a follower of Bonnet ; 

 nor one who is occupied with the binomial 

 theorem, or with the evolutions of fleets 



*See Huxley, 'Essays,' V. i., pp. 44-54. 



