The Meaning of Evolution 
CHAPTER I 
EvoLuTION BEFORE DARWIN 
Ever since men have been able to think they must 
have puzzled out for themselves some way of ac- 
counting for their own beginnings. Every savage 
tribe with whom we have any intimate acquaintance 
has some story that accounts for the origin of the 
tribe at least, and often for the beginning of the 
world. These stories are handed down from genera- 
tion to generation and are scarcely questioned in the 
thought of most men. In early Greece there was a 
succession of men whom the world calls philosophers. 
These men thought earnestly and deeply on all kinds 
of questions. Their method was not our method. 
The plan of making a long series of observations, 
before coming to any conclusion, was not the habit 
of their minds. They reasoned out on general prin- 
ciples what seemed to them must have been the origin 
of the world. It is not strange that among these 
should come, now and then, some one who in some 
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