way the whole range of facts that they describe. They cannot be final until
all that can be known is known,--until the end of all knowledge and of
time. It is because he feels so sure of what has been gained that the man
of science seems to the unscientific to claim finality for his results. He
himself is the first to point out that dogmatism is unjustified when its
assertions are not so thoroughly grounded in reasonable fact as to render
their contrary unthinkable. He seeks only for truth, realizing that new
discoveries must oblige him to amend his statement of the laws of nature
with every decade. But the great bulk of knowledge concerning life and
living forms is so sure that science asserts, with a decision often
mistaken for dogmatism, that evolution is a real natural process.

* * * * *

The conception of evolution in its turn now demands a definite
description. How are we to regard the material things of the earth? Are
they permanent and unchanged since the beginning of time, unchanging and
unchangeable at the present? We do not need Herbert Spencer's elaborate
demonstration that this is unthinkable, for we all know from daily
experience that things do change and that nothing is immutable. Did things
have a finite beginning, and have they been "made" by some _supernatural_
force or forces, personified or impersonal, different from those agencies
which we may see in operation at the present time? So says the doctrine of
special creation. Finally, we may ask if things have changed as they now
change under the influence of what we call the natural laws of the
present, and which if they operated in the past would bring the world and
all that is therein to be just what we find now. This is the teaching of
the doctrine of evolution. It is a simple brief statement of natural
order. And because it has followed the method of common sense, science
asserts that changes have taken place, that they are now taking place, and