THE WHENCE AND THE WHITHER O

embryo or principium. Plato's world was a living thing, a natural production."

Furthermore, to the ancient writers of the
idea of origin by birth from some anteceden
and this is the essential idea of evolution-
fectly natural. They speak of the "generation
heavens and the earth" as of the "generations
patriarchs. The first book of the Bible is sti
Genesis, the book of births. The writer of th
tieth Psalm says, "Before the mountains were
ever thou hadst brought to birth the earth a
world." And what satisfactory meaning can you
the words, "Let the earth bring forth," and "the
brought forth," in immediate proximity to the
"and God made," unless while the ultimate sour
God's creative power, the immediate process of f
tion was one of evolution.

The Bible is big and broad enough to include
ideas, the human mind is prone to overestimate
one or the other. Traces, at least, of a similar mo
thought persisted by the Greek Fathers of the Chu
and disappeared, if ever, with the predominance
Latin theology. To the oriental the idea of evolut
is natural. The earth is to him no inert, resist
clod; she brings forth of herself.

But our ancestors lived on a barren soil beneath
forbidding sky. They were frozen in winter a
parched in summer. Nature was to them no kind foste
mother, but a cruel stepmother, training them by ste
discipline to battle with her and the world. The
peopled the earth with gnomes and cobolds and g
ants, and their nymphs were the Valkyre. Their Go
was Thor, of the thunderbolt and hammer, and who

yet lived in continual dread of the hostile powers of
Nature. A Norse prophet or prophetess standing be-
side Elijah at Horeb would have bowed down before
the earthquake or the fire; the oriental waited for the
"still small voice." And we are heirs to a Latin
theology grafted on to the Thor-worship of our pagan
ancestors. The idea of a Nature producing benefi-
cently and kindly at the word of a loving God is
foreign to all our inherited modes of thought. And
our views of the heart of Nature are about as correct
as those of our ancestors were of God. A little more
of oriental tendencies of thought would harm neither

our theology nor our life.

What, then, is the biblical idea of Nature? God speaks to the earth, in the first chapter of Genesis, and the earth responds by "giving birth" to mountains and living beings. It is evidently no mere lifeless, inert clod, but pulsating with life and responsive to the divine commands. While yet a chaos it had been brooded over by the Divine Spirit. It is like the great "wheels within wheels," with rings full of eyes round about, which Ezekiel saw in his vision by the river Chebar. "When the living creatures went, the wheels went by them; and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up. Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creatures (or of life) was in the wheels." And above the living creatures was the firmament and the throne of God. So Nature be material, but it is material interpenetrated by the divine; if you call it a fabric, the woof may be material but the warp is God. This view contains all

may

10 THE

the truth of materialism and pantheism, and vastly more than they, and it avoids their errors and omis

sions.

To the old metaphysical hypothesis of evolution Mr. Darwin gave a scientific basis. It had always been admitted that species were capable of slight variation and that this divergence might become hereditary and thus perhaps give rise to a variety of the parent species. But it was denied that the variation

could go on

increasing indefinitely, it seemed soon to

reach a limit and stop. Early in the present century Lamarck had attempted to prove that by the use and disuse of organs through a series of generations a great divergence might arise resulting in new species. But

the theory was

crude, capable at best of but limited

application, and fell before the arguments and authority of Cuvier. The times were not ripe for such a theory. Some fifty years later, Mr. Darwin called attention to the struggle for existence as a means of aggregating these slight modifications in a divergence sufficient to species, genera, or families. His arguproduce new ment may be very briefly stated as follows: 1. There is in Nature a law of heredity; like begets

like.

2. The offspring is never exactly like the parent; and the members of the second generation differ more or less from one another. This is especially noticeable in domesticated plants and animals, but no less true of wild forms. If the parent is not exactly like the other members of the species, some of its descendants will inherit its peculiarities enhanced, others diminished.

3. Every species tends to increase in geometrical

number

But

progression. But most species actually increase in
very slowly, if at all. Now and then some in-
sect or weed escapes from its enemies, comes under
favorable food conditions, and multiplies with such
rapidity that it threatens to ravage the country.
as it multiplies it furnishes an abundance of food for
the enemies which devour it, or of food and place for
the parasites in and upon it; and they increase with
at least equal rapidity. Hence while the vanguard in-
creases prodigiously in numbers, because it has outrun
these enemies, the rear is continually slaughtered.
And thus these plagues seem in successive generations
to march across the continent.

And yet even they give but a faint idea of the reproductive powers of plants and animals. The female fish produces often many thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of eggs. Insects generally from a hundred to a thousand. Even birds, slowly as they increase, produce in a lifetime probably at least from twelve to twenty eggs. Now let us suppose that all these eggs developed, and all the birds lived out their normal period of life, and reproduced at the same rate. After not many centuries there would not be standing room on the globe for the descendants of a single pair. Again, of the one hundred eggs of an insect let us suppose that only sixty develop into the first larval, caterpillar, stage. Of these sixty, the number of members of the species remaining constant, only two will survive. The other fifty-eight die-of starvation, parasites, or other enemies, or from inclement weather. Now which two of all shall survive? Those naturally best able to escape their enemies or to resist unfavorable influences; in a word, those best suited to their

12 THE

to their environment.

conditions, or, to use Mr. Darwin's words, "conformed some peculiarity which enables it even in slight deNow if any individual has varied so as to possess gree to better escape its enemies or to resist unfavorable conditions, those of its descendants who inherit be the most likely to escape, those without it to perish. most markedly this peculiar quality or variation will If a form varies unfavorably, becomes for instance more conspicuous to its enemies, it will almost certainly

become more

produce

marked from generation to generation.

istics by selecting the individuals

ity

possessing this qual

Now it has always been known that breeders could è a race of markedly peculiar form or characterin the highest degree and breeding only from these. selection of the individuals from which to breed. SimThe breeder depends upon heredity, variation, and his ilarly in nature new species have arisen through heredity, variation, and a selection according to the laws of nature of those varying in conformity with their environment. And this Mr. Darwin called natural, in

contrast with the breeder's artificial,

selection," aris

ing from the "struggle for existence," and resulting in what Mr. Spencer has called the "survival of the

fittest."

Let us take a single illustration. Many of the species
of beetles on oceanic islands have very rudimentary
wings, or none at all, and yet their nearest relatives are
neighboring continent. Mr.
winged forms on some

Darwin would explain the origin of these evidently
as follows: They are de-
distinct wingless species
scended from winged ancestors blown or otherwise