8 Proceedings of the Newport Natural History Society. 
No man more admires and reveres Darwin for what he 
has done to advance our knowledge of the intricate problems 
of biology, than I do; and any criticism I may make in 
the course of this paper must be considered as directed against 
his theories and not against him. Darwin’s patience and per¬ 
severance in his long-continued investigations, his unassum¬ 
ing simplicity and his absolute candor, mark him as a man 
among thousands and his name is justly honored by the 
whole world. But Darwin lacked both the habit of mind 
and the necessary training in logic and philosophy essential 
to make him a master of induction such as were Newton 
and Cuvier. From reading rather than from experiment 
he conceived the idea of natural selection as a cause of 
specific genesis. When, after its promulgation, the criticisms 
of his brother naturalists and his own observation, showed 
its weakness in places (which with admirable candor he did 
not fail to admit) he supplemented it by a theory of sexual 
selection, and later by the provisional hypothesis of Pan- 
genesis. Thus we see that “Darwinism” is not the expression 
of a clear-cut principle but is, so to speak, a series of spec¬ 
ulative ladders bound one to another in the hope and 
expectation that by them the observer may mount from the 
valley of induction to the heights of demonstration. 
The sum of these theories (which we shall look at a 
little more clearly later on) may be called Darwinism, care 
being taken not to confound it with the larger participle 
of evolution to which it is subsidiary. But the term evolu¬ 
tion itself is far from being \yell-defined even among scien¬ 
tists who use it most and who, of all men, should be most 
careful for strict definition, for accuracy of thought is. as 
essential to scientific induction as it is to metaphysical gen¬ 
eralization. 
One of the most common errors in the use of the word 
evolution springs from a confusion of ideas as to the relation 
of cause and effect. By some writers evolution is taken to 
mean the efficient cause of development. They speak of 
the earth, or even the universe, as coming into being through 
