12 PHYSICAL BASIS OF CIVILIZATION 



descended from lower, and that man's origin is no 

 exception from this unalterable rule. 



For evidences and arguments sustaining this law 

 converge from every branch of the natural sciences, 

 and from all the widely divergent fields of inquiry 

 in which naturalists and investigators have been 

 engaged; and although these evidences and argu- 

 ments have been frequently contested, and with great 

 ability, they have always been vindicated in the end. 



Hundreds of institutions of learning, experts 

 by the thousands, competent observers and think- 

 ers, authors by the hundreds of thousands, have con- 

 tributed corroborative facts and conclusive lines of 

 reasoning. Tests and tests of tests, series after 

 series, practically innumerable, have been applied 

 more so than to any other problem ever presented 

 for consideration to physical scientists, until finally 

 the concensus of the competent has become unani- 

 mous. 



Does this assert the evolution of man from lower 

 forms of life ? It does assert his descent, or deriva- 

 tion, but not his evolution. To assert the evolu- 

 tion of any organic type from another is a misuse 

 of language, apt to lead to misapprehension. 



The term "evolution" is properly applied only to 

 that process by which inorganic and organic masses 

 or individuals progress, by dissipation of motion 

 and concentration of matter, from more or less 

 indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, towards more 

 definite coherent heterogeneity, which, in view of 



