8 READINGS IN EVOLUTION, GENETICS, AND EUGENICS 
“Our present state of opinion is this: we know to some extent 
how plants and animals and man evolve; we do not know why they 
evolve. We know, for example, that there has existed a more or less 
complete chain of beings from nomad to man, that the one-toed horse 
had a four-toed ancestor, that man has descended from an unknown 
ape-like form somewhere in the Tertiary. We know not only those 
larger chains of descent, but many of the minute details of these 
transformations. We do not know their internal causes, for none of 
the explanations which have in turn been offered during the last hun- 
dred years satisfies the demands of observation, of experiment, of 
reason. It is best frankly to acknowledge that the chief causes of the 
orderly evolution of the germ are still entirely unknown, and that our 
search must take an entirely fresh start.”—H. F. Osborn, The Origin 
and Evolution of Life (Charles Scribner’s Sons), 1918, pp. viii-x. 
WHAT ORGANIC EVOLUTION IS NOT 
[z. The evolution doctrine is not a creed to be accepted on faith, 
as are religious faiths or creeds. It appeals entirely to the logical 
faculties, not to the spiritual, and is not to be accepted until proved. 
2. It does not teach that man is a direct descendant of the apes 
and monkeys, but that both man and the modern apes and monkeys 
have been derived from some as yet unknown generalized primate 
ancestor possessing the common attributes of all three groups and 
lacking their specializations. 
3. It is not synonymous with Darwinism, for the latter is merely 
one man’s attempt to explain how evolution has occurred. 
4. Contrary to a very widespread idea, evolution is by no means 
incompatible with religion. Witness the fact that the early Christian 
Theologians, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, were evolutionists, and 
the majority of thoughtful theologians of all creeds are today in 
accord with the evolution idea, many of them even applying the prin- 
ciple to their studies of religion; for religious ideas and ideals, like 
other human characters, have evolved from crude beginnings and are 
still undergoing processes of refinement. 
5. The evolution idea is not degrading. Quite the contrary; it is 
ennobling as is well brought out by the classic statement of Darwin 
on page 4 and by that of Lyell, on page 3. 
6. The evolution doctrine does not teach that man is the goal of 
all evolutionary process, but that man is merely the present end 
product of one particular series of evolutionary changes. The goal 
