CHAPTER VIII 



CONCERNING THE PRESENT OCCURRENCE OF ARCHEBIOSIS 



EVOLUTION implies continuity and uniformity. It teaches us 

 to look upon events of all kinds as the products of continu- 

 ously operating causes — it recognises no sudden breaks or causeless 

 stoppages in the sequence of natural phenomena. It equally 

 implies that natural events do not vary spontaneously. It is a 

 philosophy which deals with natural phenomena in their widest 

 sense : it embraces both the present and the far-distant past. It 

 assures us that the properties and tendencies now manifest in our 

 surrounding world of things are in all respects similar to those 

 which have existed in the past. Without a basis of this kind, the 

 Evolution Hypothesis would be a mere idle dream. Uniformity is 

 for it an all-pervading necessity. 



Starting from facts of daily observation and from scientific 

 experiments, the properties and tendencies of things have been 

 noted and grouped ; whilst philosophers, using the knowledge thus 

 gained, have sought to trace back the progress of events and show 

 how this complex world has gradually been derived from a world 

 of more and more simple composition. We are taken back in 

 imagination even much further. We are referred to a primal haze 

 or nebula — as the gigantic germ of our Solar System. This was 

 the conception of Kant and of Laplace. 



But whether we follow the philosopher in his bold speculations 

 concerning the past, or listen to the biologist making his predictions 

 as to the future stages which the germ of a given animal will pass 

 through in the progress of its development — in each case the 

 ' uniformity of nature ' is tacitly assumed. This assumption under- 

 lies almost all our thoughts and actions, even in every-day life. 

 And without such a belief, regarding the succession of events, 

 science would be impossible — the very idea of it, in fact, could 



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