ABSTRACT
The doctrine with which Darwin’s memory is most intimately associated has written itself deep in the annals of modern scientific thought. His theory of evolution, acting chiefly through natural selection, has profoundly modified men’s conception of the history of organic life upon this earth. Darwin affirmed, first of all, that the varieties of living creatures peopling this globe are the result of certain natural causes operating automatically. Secondly, Darwin taught that this mechanical process, affecting the life-story of the lowest animals, has played its part in the history of the very highest, of man himself. Evolution—no new thing then for the man of science, seeing that Darwin claimed to have discovered not the great principle itself, but the manner in which it works in the animal world—Evolution was made familiar for the first time to the average man. His Bible taught him that this world and all it contains had been made in six days by special acts of creation.
