an altered conception of the process of formation of the 

 organic world." According tO' the new conception, the 

 many extinct forms of antiquity are not, as Darwin sup- 

 posed, "unsuccessful attempts and continued aberrations of 

 nature" — how this reminds one of that old, naive, much- 

 ridiculed idea that fossils were models that God had dis- 

 carded as unserviceable — but would gain new life and as- 

 sume hitherto unsuspected relationship to the present or- 

 ganic creation. 



"Science, which seeks after operative causes, at the 

 beginning of the century regarded creation as a multipli- 

 city of phenomena without any causal connection as to 

 their origin. Darwin taught as a fundamental principle the 

 unity and the causal inter-relation of creation, but was not 

 entirely able to save this hypothesis from a violent and 

 sudden death. In the future sketch creation will ap- 

 pear as wholly restricted in itself and lasting, the causes 

 of its limitation lie, up to the time of the intervention of 

 men, solely in the balanced motion of the planet which it 

 peoples." 



At the close of his address Steinmann points out that 

 behind the problem of the manner of development, 

 there stands "the unsolved question regarding its operative 

 causes." "Regarding this point," he continues, "opinions 

 have perhaps never been so divergent as they are to-day. 

 The times have passed when the Darwinian explanations 

 were regarded with naive confidente as the alpha and 

 omega of the doctrine of Descent. Not only are the ad- 

 herents of Darwinian ideas divided among themselves, but 



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