Note 1 — Chapter V · IRRECONCILABLE DIFFICULTIES CONNECTED WITH EVOLUTION

General views of the development or evolution of the visible order of nature have been entertained by philosophers from the earliest historical times. There were pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Lucretius (600 B.C.–50 A.D.). The inquiry was then arrested for nearly sixteen hundred years—that is, until the renascence of Science. As knowledge, in spite of ecclesiastical discouragement, again slowly advanced, the science of biology gained in strength, and the work of Linnæus, Buffon, Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin, and others, paved the way for that modern theory of Evolution which Darwin, Wallace, Spencer, Huxley, and Haeckel have demonstrated to us. This doctrine of Evolution is no longer a mere speculative theory, possibly or probably true, but an established fact accepted by the whole scientific world with hardly a single dissentient voice. We know that everything as it now exists is the product of Evolution—the solar system, the earth, all lower forms of life, and lastly man, together with his languages, arts, sciences, theology, social habits, instincts, and, according to many high authorities, morals, conscience, and consciousness. Yes, “man, perfect as he may appear to us, is still not a being apart in nature, but by his whole organisation is continuous with the other zoological species.” “Anthropology, properly so-called, is, in fact, merely a chapter of zoology.” “The homological structure of man, his embryological development, and the rudiments which he still retains, all declare in the plainest possible manner that he is descended from some lower form.” He “derives his moral sense from the social feelings which are instinctive or innate in the lower animals.”1