EVOLUTION. THE LIVING ORGANISM AND ITS NATURAL 



HISTORY 



THE Doctrine of Evolution is a body of principles 

 and facts concerning the present condition and past 

 history of the living and lifeless things that make up 

 the universe. It teaches that natural processes have 

 gone on in the earlier ages of the world as they do to-day, 

 and that natural forces have ordered the production 

 of all things about which we know. 



It is difficult to find the right words with which to 

 begin the discussion of so vast a subject. As a general 

 statement the doctrine is perhaps the simplest formula 

 of natural science, although the facts and processes 

 which it summarizes are the most complex that the 

 human intellect can contemplate. Nothing in natural 

 history seems to be surer than evolution, and yet the^ 

 final solution of evolutionary problems defies the most 

 subtle skill of the trained analyst of nature's order. 

 No single human mind can contain all the facts of a 

 single small department of natural science, nor can one 

 mind comprehend fully the relations of all the various 

 departments of knowledge, but nevertheless evolution 

 seems to describe the history of all facts and then- 

 relations throughout the entire field of knowledge. 

 Were it possible for a man to live a hundred years, he 

 could only begin the exploration of the vast domains 



