It was this addition to the
evolutionary concept, fortified by Darwin's powerful advocacy of the
general principle of descent with modification, that won over the whole
world to the 'Darwinian theory.' Before Darwin, many men of science
were evolutionists: after Darwin, all men of science became so at once,
and the rest of the world is rapidly preparing to follow their
leadership.
As applied to life, then, the evolutionary idea is briefly this--that
plants and animals have all a natural origin from a single primitive
living creature, which itself was the product of light and heat acting
on the special chemical constituents of an ancient ocean. Starting from
that single early form, they have gone on developing ever since, from
the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, assuming ever more varied shapes,
till at last they have reached their present enormous variety of tree,
and shrub, and herb, and seaweed, of beast, and bird, and fish, and
creeping insect. Evolution throughout has been one and continuous, from
nebula to sun, from gas-cloud to planet, from early jelly-speck to man
or elephant. So at least evolutionists say--and of course they ought to
know most about it.
But evolution, according to the evolutionists, does not even stop here.
Psychology as well as biology has also its evolutionary explanation:
mind is concerned as truly as matter. If the bodies of animals are
evolved, their minds must be evolved likewise. Herbert Spencer and his
followers have been mainly instrumental in elucidating this aspect of
the case.
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