WHAT EVOLUTION MEANS. 



If any person devoted his time to the 

 correction of popular errors, there is no 

 probability that he would have any spare 

 moments for eating or sleeping. The se- 

 rious aspect of the present condition of 

 popular knowledge, however, is the ap- 

 parent absence of desire upon the part 

 of many young people to grasp the princi- 

 ples of natural science. I am not exag- 

 gerating when I say that there are plenty 

 of fairly educated persons in every large 

 city who deny that man is an animal, and 

 'who insist that a whale must be a fish, be- 

 cause it lives in the sea. 



Everybody professes to be aware in a 

 sort of unconscious way that the theory 

 of Evolution was invented by Mr. Dar- 

 win, and patented by Mr. Spencer, the 

 most important points in the doctrine be- 

 ing that all men are descended from mon- 

 keys which had lost their tails, that the 

 fittest survived, and that there is a "miss- 

 ing link" between man and his ancestors. 



These ideas have little foundation in 

 fact. Darwin no more discovered Evolu- 

 tion than Edison discovered electricity ; 

 we are not descended from any existing 

 ape, with or without a tail, and no compe- 

 tent person ever asserted that we were ; 

 and there are good reasons for saying 

 that such palaeontological "links" as are 

 missing are not of the greatest possible 

 importance. In short, whatever is evolu- 

 tionary in the popular mind, is a bur- 

 lesque upon the evolutionist's true opin- 

 ions. 



Charles Darwin was born in 1809, on 

 the same day as Lincoln, but, long before 

 Darwin's time, evolution had become a 

 recognized force in science. Kant, who 

 lived from 1724 to 1804, and Laplace 

 (1749- 1 827) had worked out the develop- 

 ment of the sun and the planets from 

 white-hot gas. Lyell (1797- 1875) had 

 worked out the evolution of the earth's 

 surface to its present condition ; and La- 

 marck (1744- 1 829) had shown that there 

 is evidence of the descent of all animals, 

 as well as all plants, from a few ancestors 

 by gradual modification. Again, Her- 



bert Spencer, during Darwin's lifetime, 

 began to work out the growth of mind 

 from the most simple beginnings to the 

 highest development of human thought. 



The philosophies of the ancients were 

 all of them founded upon limited obser- 

 vation; they were merely speculative 

 fancy-pictures evolved from the author's 

 own consciousness. Modern science, 

 however, is of quite a different character. 

 It has relegated certain fundamental 

 propositions to a region called "the Un- 

 knowable" (this means at present un- 

 knowable), and it permits everybody to 

 explain these propositions by means of 

 any hypotheses which may occur to him. 

 In other words, modern science does not 

 deal with such phenomena as are at the 

 present day outside the range of the hu- 

 man intellect ; and I venture to warn the 

 reader that speculation concerning mat- 

 ters upon which we have as yet no scien- 

 tific data is waste of time. Modern science 

 is founded upon investigation and obser- 

 vation, and the evidence is always weigh- 

 ed as carefully and as impartially as are 

 the statements of witnesses in a law court 



One naturally asks : "What is Evolu- 

 tion ?" "Continuous change according to 

 certain fixed laws," is a reply which may 

 have some value, although it is quite in- 

 sufficient. A technical definition, given 

 by Mr. Spencer, is as follows : 



"An integration of matter and con- 

 comitant dissipation of motion, during 

 which the matter passes from an indefin- 

 ite, incoherent heterogeneity, to a defin- 

 ite, coherent homogeneity, and during 

 which the retained motion undergoes a 

 parallel transformation." Anybody who 

 will think about this definition will be able 

 to appreciate its meaning, provided a 

 good dictionary is at hand. 



Evolution is not another word for De- 

 velopment, and Mr. Spencer has care- 

 fully distinguished the one from the 

 other ; but the details are too technical for 

 notice in this paper. Evolution may be 

 regarded as "a general term for the his- 

 tory of the steps by which any living be- 



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