JUN 27 1900 
ORGANIC EVOLUTION. DARWINISM, AND THE GENESIS 
OF SPECIES* 
By RICHARD BLISS. 
At the present day few words are more in common use 
than the terms evolution and development. From the 
author in his studio to the exuberant journalist of the 
daily and weekly press; from the pulpit and rostrum to 
the social conversazione, the phrases “principles of evolu¬ 
tion,” “development theory” and “Darwinism” have 
become familiar to us, like household words. Not for cen¬ 
turies has the world seen such a rapid diffusion and wide¬ 
spread acceptance of a series of hypothetical propositions 
as that which followed the enunciation by Darwin of his 
Origin of Species and his Descent of Man. The theory of the 
origin of species by natural selection, which Darwin pro¬ 
pounded, took the world by storm It spread from country 
to country, and was willingly—I might say, hastily—accepted 
by most naturalists as the only rational solution of the 
problem of existence which had. up to that time, been put 
forth. From the scientific world it spread to the educated 
public at large and, despite a considerable amount of oppo¬ 
sition which it encountered, it was quite as enthusiastically, 
and still more hastily, accepted by the laity as it had been 
by the naturalists. The world rang with the praises of 
Darwin, whom perfervid writers and speakers compared 
to Copernicus and Newton. Old views were to be discarded, 
and a new era inaugurated. The hour of emancipation had 
come, and Charles Darwin was the Moses who was to lead 
•Read before the Society November 13. 18y8. 
