6 ORGANIC EVOLUTION — PHYSICAL 



as the individual, he might perhaps have been led to 

 conclusions which are as true as they are surprising. 



'Taking into account this attitude of the general 

 public, and in particular that of the mass of medical 

 men, to whom, if to any, this work should prove of 

 interest, and considering also that a wide audience 

 must be appealed to if it is to have that amount of 

 practical usefulness which the author hopes for it, it 

 seems needful, before proceeding with the main body 

 of the work, to set forth as briefly and clearly as possible 

 certain biological data on which the argument is 

 founded ; especially as, so far as the author is aware, 

 they have never yet been explained in sufficiently 

 simple terms to be comprehensible by the general 

 reader; and more especially since, in his conception of 

 the process of evolution, the author differs somewhat 

 from accepted views, or rather since in his opinion 

 acknowledged authorities have not recognized or have 

 not laid sufficient stress on certain processes of evolution 

 which appear to him of the gi'eatest importance. This 

 book is therefore divisible into two parts : in the first 

 the problem of evolution in general is very briefly dealt 

 with, but an attempt is made to penetrate somewhat 

 deeper in certain directions than has hitherto been 

 done ; in the second part, the conclusions arrived at in 

 the first are applied to the problem of man's present 

 evolution, and an endeavour is made to show that this 

 evolution is proceeding in a direction hitherto altogether 

 unsuspected. 



To many, and, surprising as it may seem, even to 

 some medical men, in spite of what ought to be a 

 scientific training, the theory of evolution means nothing 

 more than the theory of the descent of man from the 

 monkey. In reality it means much more; it teaches 

 that plant and animal types have not persisted un- 

 changed from the time life first became possible on the 



