626 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [Vow. XXXII. 
It is naturally a matter of satisfaction and pride to us as 
zoologists that, though evolution has been in the air from the 
days of the Greek philosophers down to the time of Lamarck, 
the modern views as to the origin of variations, of adaptation, 
of the struggle for existence, of competition, and the preserva- 
tion of favored organs or species by selection, are the products 
of single-minded zodlogists like Darwin, Wallace, Fritz Müller, 
Semper, and Haeckel. It is the work of these men, supple- 
mented by the labors of Spencer and of Huxley, and the pow- 
erful influence of the botanists Hooker and Gray, all of whom 
contributed their lifelong toil and efforts in laying the founda- 
tion stones of the theory, which has brought about its general 
acceptance among thinking men. It is these naturalists, some 
of them happily still living, who had worked out the principle 
of evolution from the generalized to the specialized, from the 
simple to the complex, from chaos to cosmos. 
The doctrine of evolution has been firmly established on a 
scientific basis by many workers in all departments of biology, 
and found not only to withstand criticism from every quarter, 
but to be an indispensable tool for the investigator. The 
strongest proof of its genuine value as a working theory is 
that it has, under the light shed by it, opened up many an 
avenue of inquiry leading into new fields of research. It is 
based on the inductive method, the observation and arrange- 
ment of a wide series of facts. Moreover, it explains a vast 
dents of mape and adopted the scientific method, zz., the patient 
investigation of as wide me of facts as possible, wrote: “I am convince 
that there is a science of ra origins of mankind, and that it will be constructed 
one day, not by abstract speculation, but by scientific researches. What human 
ife in the BRAN condition of science would suffice to explore all the sides of this 
single problem? And still, how can it be resolved without the scientific study i 
the o n And if it be not resolved, how can we say that we know m 
and He who would contribute to the solution of this problem, even 
by a very imperfect essay, would do more for philosophy than by half a century 
of metaphysical meditation” (p. 150). Again he says: “The great progress of 
modern thought has been the ati of the category of evolution for the cate- 
gory of the Jeng; of the conception of the relative for the conception of the 
absolute, of movement for immobility. Formerly everything was considered as 
‘being’ (an of aR ARER — m spoke of law, of religion, of politics, of 
` poetry in an absolute fashio t present everything is considered as in the 
process of See age bo ‘tok 
