VIII. EVOLUTION AND THE HIGHER HUMAN LIFE 278

INDEX 313




I

EVOLUTION. THE LIVING ORGANISM AND ITS NATURAL HISTORY


The Doctrine of Evolution is a body of principles and facts concerning the
present condition and past history of the living and lifeless things that
make up the universe. It teaches that natural processes have gone on in
the earlier ages of the world as they do to-day, and that natural forces
have ordered the production of all things about which we know.

It is difficult to find the right words with which to begin the discussion
of so vast a subject. As a general statement the doctrine is perhaps the
simplest formula of natural science, although the facts and processes
which it summarizes are the most complex that the human intellect can
contemplate. Nothing in natural history seems to be surer than evolution,
and yet the final solution of evolutionary problems defies the most subtle
skill of the trained analyst of nature's order. No single human mind can
contain all the facts of a single small department of natural science, nor
can one mind comprehend fully the relations of all the various departments
of knowledge, but nevertheless evolution seems to describe the history of
all facts and their relations throughout the entire field of knowledge.