It is scarcely necessary to inform the intelligent reader, who of course differs fundamentally from that inferior class of human beings known to all of us in our own minds as 'other people,' that almost every point in the catalogue thus briefly enumerated12 is a popular fallacy of the wildest description. Mr. Darwin did not invent evolution any more than George Stephenson invented the steam-engine, or Mr. Edison the electric telegraph. We are not descended from men with tails, any more than we are descended from Indian elephants. There is no evidence that we have anything in particular more than the remotest fiftieth cousinship with our poor relation the West African gorilla. Science is not in search of a 'missing link'; few links are anywhere missing, and those are for the most part wholly unimportant ones. If we found the imaginary link in question, he would not be a monkey, nor yet in any way a tailed man. And so forth13 generally through the whole list of popular beliefs and current fallacies as to the real meaning of evolutionary teaching. Whatever most people think evolutionary is for the most part a pure parody14 of the evolutionist's opinion.
But a more serious error than all these pervades what we may call the drawing-room view of the evolutionist theory. So far as Society with a big initial is concerned, evolutionism first began to be talked about, and therefore known (for Society does not read; it listens, or rather it overhears and catches fragmentary echoes) when Darwin published his 'Origin of Species.' That great book consisted simply of a theory as to the causes which led to the distinctions of kind between plants and animals. With evolution at large it had nothing to do; it took for granted the origin of sun, moon, and stars, planets and comets, the earth and all that in it is, the sea and the dry land, the mountains and the valleys, nay15 even life itself in the crude form, everything in fact, save the one point of the various types and species of living beings. Long before Darwin's book appeared evolution had been a recognised force in the moving world of science and philosophy. Kant and Laplace had worked out the development of suns and earths from white-hot star-clouds. Lyell had worked out the evolution of the earth's surface to its present highly complex geographical16 condition. Lamarck had worked out the descent of plants and animals from a common ancestor by slow modification17. Herbert Spencer had worked out the growth of mind from its simplest beginnings to its highest outcome in human thought.
But Society, like Gallio, cared nothing for all these things. The evolutionary principles had never been put into a single big book, asked for at Mudie's, and permitted to lie on the drawing-room table side by side with the last new novel and the last fat volume of scandalous court memoirs18. Therefore Society ignored them and knew them not; the word evolution scarcely entered at all as yet into its polite and refined dinner-table vocabulary. It recognised only the 'Darwinian theory,' 'natural selection,' 'the missing link,' and the belief that men were merely monkeys who had lost their tails, presumably by sitting upon them. To the world at large that learned Mr. Darwin had invented and patented the entire business, including descent with modification, if such notions ever occurred at all to the world-at-large's speculative21 intelligence.
Now, evolutionism is really a thing of far deeper growth and older antecedents than this easy, superficial drawing-room view would lead us to imagine. It is a very ancient and respectable theory indeed, and it has an immense variety of minor22 developments. I am not going to push it back, in the fashionable modern scientific manner, to the vague and indefinite hints in our old friend Lucretius. The great original Roman poet—the only original poet in the Latin language—did indeed hit out for himself a very good rough working sketch23 of a sort of nebulous and shapeless evolutionism. It was bold, it was consistent, for its time it was wonderful. But Lucretius's philosophy, like all the philosophies of the older world, was a mere20 speculative idea, a fancy picture of the development of things, not dependent upon observation of facts at all, but wholly evolved, like the German thinker's camel, out of its author's own pregnant inner consciousness. The Roman poet would no doubt have built an excellent superstructure if he had only possessed24 a little straw to make his bricks of. As it was, however, scientific brick-making being still in its infancy25, he could only construct in a day a shadowy Aladdin's palace of pure fanciful Epicurean phantasms, an imaginary world of imaginary atoms, fortuitously concurring26 out of void chaos27 into an orderly universe, as though by miracle. It is not thus that systems arise which regenerate28 the thought of humanity; he who would build for all time must make sure first of a solid foundation, and then use sound bricks in place of the airy nothings of metaphysical speculation29.
It was in the last century that the evolutionary idea really began to take form and shape in the separate conceptions of Kant, Laplace, Lamarck, and Erasmus Darwin. These were the true founders30 of our modern evolutionism. Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer were the Joshuas who led the chosen people into the land which more than one venturous Moses had already dimly descried31 afar off from the Pisgah top of the eighteenth century.
Kant and Laplace came first in time, as astronomy comes first in logical order. Stars and suns, and planets and satellites, necessarily precede in development plants and animals. You can have no cabbages without a world to grow them in. The science of the stars was therefore reduced to comparative system and order, while the sciences of life, and mind, and matter were still a hopeless and inextricable muddle32. It was no wonder, then, that the evolution of the heavenly bodies should have been clearly apprehended34 and definitely formulated35 while the evolution of the earth's crust was still imperfectly understood, and the evolution of living beings was only tentatively and hypothetically hinted at in a timid whisper.
In the beginning, say the astronomical36 evolutionists, not only this world, but all the other worlds in the universe, existed potentially, as the poet justly remarks, in 'a haze37 of fluid light,' a vast nebula38 of enormous extent and almost inconceivable material thinness. The world arose out of a sort of primitive40 world-gruel. The matter of which it was composed was gas, of such an extraordinary and unimaginable gasiness that millions of cubic miles of it might easily be compressed into a common antibilious pill-box. The pill-box itself, in fact, is the net result of a prolonged secular41 condensation42 of myriads43 of such enormous cubes of this prim39?val matter. Slowly setting around common centres, however, in anticipation45 of Sir Isaac Newton's gravitative theories, the fluid haze gradually collected into suns and stars, whose light and heat is presumably due to the clashing together of their component46 atoms as they fall perpetually towards the central mass. Just as in a burning candle the impact of the oxygen atoms in the air against the carbon and hydrogen atoms in the melted and rarefied wax or tallow produces the light and heat of the flame, so in nebula or sun the impact of the various gravitating atoms one against the other produces the light and heat by whose aid we are enabled to see and know those distant bodies. The universe, according to this now fashionable nebular theory, began as a single vast ocean of matter of immense tenuity, spread all alike over all space as far as nowhere, and comparatively little different within itself when looked at side by side with its own final historical outcome. In Mr. Spencer's perspicuous phrase, evolution in this aspect is a change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous47, from the incoherent to the coherent, and from the indefinite to the definite condition. Difficult words at first to apprehend33, no doubt, and therefore to many people, as to Mr. Matthew Arnold, very repellent, but full of meaning, lucidity49, and suggestiveness, if only we once take the trouble fairly and squarely to understand them.
Every sun and every star thus formed is for ever gathering50 in the hem19 of its outer robe upon itself, for ever radiating off its light and heat into surrounding space, and for ever growing denser51 and colder as it sets slowly towards its centre of gravity. Our own sun and solar system may be taken as good typical working examples of how the stars thus constantly shrink into smaller and ever smaller dimensions around their own fixed52 centre. Naturally, we know more about our own solar system than about any other in our own universe, and it also possesses for us a greater practical and personal interest than any outside portion of the galaxy53. Nobody can pretend to be profoundly immersed in the internal affairs of Sirius or of Alpha Centauri. A fiery54 revolution in the belt of Orion would affect us less than a passing finger-ache in a certain single terrestrial baby of our own household. Therefore I shall not apologise in any way for leaving the remainder of the sidereal55 universe to its unknown fate, and concentrating my attention mainly on the affairs of that solitary56 little, out-of-the-way, second-rate system, whereof we form an inappreciable portion. The matter which now composes the sun and its attendant bodies (the satellites included) was once spread out, according to Laplace, to at least the furthest orbit of the outermost58 planet—that is to say, so far as our present knowledge goes, the planet Neptune59. Of course, when it was expanded to that immense distance, it must have been very thin indeed, thinner than our clumsy human senses can even conceive of. An American would say, too thin; but I put Americans out of court at once as mere irreverent scoffers. From the orbit of Neptune, or something outside it, the faint and cloud-like mass which bore within it C?sar and his fortunes, not to mention the remainder of the earth and the solar system, began slowly to converge60 and gather itself in, growing denser and denser but smaller and smaller as it gradually neared its existing dimensions. How long a time it took to do it is for our present purpose relatively61 unimportant: the cruel physicists62 will only let us have a beggarly hundred million years or so for the process, while the grasping and extravagant63 evolutionary geologists64 beg with tears for at least double or even ten times that limited period. But at any rate it has taken a good long while, and, as far as most of us are personally concerned, the difference of one or two hundred millions, if it comes to that, is not really at all an appreciable57 one.
As it condensed and lessened65 towards its central core, revolving66 rapidly on its great axis67, the solar mist left behind at irregular intervals68 concentric rings or belts of cloud-like matter, cast off from its equator; which belts, once more undergoing a similar evolution on their own account, have hardened round their private centres of gravity into Jupiter or Saturn69, the Earth or Venus. Round these again, minor belts or rings have sometimes formed, as in Saturn's girdle of petty satellites; or subsidiary planets, thrown out into space, have circled round their own primaries, as the moon does around this sublunary world of ours. Meanwhile, the main central mass of all, retreating ever inward as it dropped behind it these occasional little reminders70 of its temporary stoppages, formed at last the sun itself, the main luminary71 of our entire system. Now, I won't deny that this primitive Kantian and Laplacian evolutionism, this nebular theory of such exquisite72 concinnity, here reduced to its simplest terms and most elementary dimensions, has received many hard knocks from later astronomers73, and has been a good deal bowled over, both on mathematical and astronomical grounds, by recent investigators74 of nebul? and meteors. Observations on comets and on the sun's surface have lately shown that it contains in all likelihood a very considerable fanciful admixture. It isn't more than half true; and even the half now totters75 in places. Still, as a vehicle of popular exposition the crude nebular hypothesis in its rawest form serves a great deal better than the truth, so far as yet known, on the good old Greek principle of the half being often more than the whole. The great point which it impresses on the mind is the cardinal76 idea of the sun and planets, with their attendant satellites, not as turned out like manufactured articles, ready made, at measured intervals, in a vast and deliberate celestial77 Orrery, but as due to the slow and gradual working of natural laws, in accordance with which each has assumed by force of circumstances its existing place, weight, orbit, and motion.
The grand conception of a gradual becoming, instead of a sudden making, which Kant and Laplace thus applied to the component bodies of the universe at large, was further applied by Lyell and his school to the outer crust of this one particular petty planet of ours. While the astronomers went in for the evolution of suns, stars, and worlds, Lyell and his geological brethren went in for the evolution of the earth's surface. As theirs was stellar, so his was mundane78. If the world began by being a red-hot mass of planetary matter in a high state of internal excitement, boiling and dancing with the heat of its emotions, it gradually cooled down with age and experience, for growing old is growing cold, as every one of us in time, alas79, discovers. As it passed from its fiery and volcanic80 youth to its staider and soberer middle age, a solid crust began to form in filmy fashion upon its cooling surface. The aqueous vapour that had floated at first as steam around its heated mass condensed with time into a wide ocean over the now hardened shell. Gradually this ocean shifted its bulk into two or three main bodies that sank into hollows of the viscid crust, the precursors81 of Atlantic, Pacific, and the Indian Seas. Wrinklings of the crust, produced by the cooling and consequent contraction82, gave rise at first to baby mountain ranges, and afterwards to the earliest rough draughts83 of the still very vague and sketchy84 continents. The world grew daily more complex and more diverse; it progressed, in accordance with the Spencerian law, from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, and so forth, as aforesaid, with delightful85 regularity86.
At last, by long and graduated changes, seas and lands, peninsulas and islands, lakes and rivers, hills and mountains, were wrought87 out by internal or external energies on the crust thus generally fashioned. Evaporation88 from the oceans gave rise to clouds and rain and hailstorms; the water that fell upon the mountain tops cut out the valleys and river basins; rills gathered into brooks89, brooks into streams, streams into prim?val Niles, and Amazons, and Mississippis. Volcanic forces uplifted here an Alpine90 chain, or depressed91 there a deep-sea hollow. Sediment92 washed from the hills and plains, or formed from countless93 skeletons of marine94 creatures, gathered on the sinking bed of the ocean as soft ooze95, or crumbling96 sand, or thick mud, or gravel97 and conglomerate98. Now upheaved into an elevated table-land, now slowly carved again by rain and rill into valley and watershed99, and now worn down once more into the mere degraded stump100 of a plateau, the crust underwent innumerable changes, but almost all of them exactly the same in kind, and mostly in degree, as those we still see at work imperceptibly in the world around us. Rain washing down the soil; weather crumbling the solid rock; waves dashing at the foot of the cliffs; rivers forming deltas101 at their barred mouths; shingle102 gathering on the low spits; floods sweeping103 before them the countryside; ice grinding ceaselessly at the mountain top; peat filling up the shallow lake—these are the chief factors which have gone to make the physical world as we now actually know it. Land and sea, coast and contour, hill and valley, dale and gorge104, earth-sculpture generally—all are due to the ceaseless interaction of these separately small and unnoticeable causes, aided or retarded105 by the slow effects of elevation106 or depression from the earth's shrinkage towards its own centre. Geology, in short, has shown us that the world is what it is, not by virtue107 of a single sudden creative act, nor by virtue of successive terrible and recurrent cataclysms108, but by virtue of the slow continuous action of causes still always equally operative.
Evolution in geology leads up naturally to evolution in the science of life. If the world itself grew, why not also the animals and plants that inhabit it? Already in the eager active eighteenth century this obvious idea had struck in the germ a large number of zoologists109 and botanists110, and in the hands of Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin it took form as a distinct and elaborate system of organic evolution. Buffon had been the first to hint at the truth; but Buffon was an eminently111 respectable nobleman in the dubious112 days of the tottering113 monarchy114, and he did not care personally for the Bastille, viewed as a place of permanent residence. In Louis Quinze's France, indeed, as things then went, a man who offended the orthodoxy of the Sorbonne was prone115 to find himself shortly ensconced in free quarters, and kept there for the term of his natural existence without expense to his heirs or executors. So Buffon did not venture to say outright116 that he thought all animals and plants were descended one from the other with slight modifications117; that would have been wicked, and the Sorbonne would have proved its wickedness to him in a most conclusive118 fashion by promptly119 getting him imprisoned120 or silenced. It is so easy to confute your opponent when you are a hundred strong and he is one weak unit. Buffon merely said, therefore, that if we didn't know the contrary to be the case by sure warrant, we might easily have concluded (so fallible is our reason) that animals always varied121 slightly, and that such variations, indefinitely accumulated, would suffice to account for almost any amount of ultimate difference. A donkey might thus have grown into a horse, and a bird might have developed from a primitive lizard122. Only we know it was quite otherwise! A quiet hint from Buffon was as good as a declaration from many less knowing or suggestive people. All over Europe, the wise took Buffon's hint for what he meant it; and the unwise blandly123 passed it by as a mere passing little foolish vagary124 of that great ironical125 writer and thinker.
Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of his grandson, was no fool; on the contrary, he was the most far-sighted man of his day in England; he saw at once what Buffon was driving at; and he worked out 'Mr. Buffon's' half-concealed hint to all its natural and legitimate126 conclusions. The great Count was always plain Mr. Buffon to his English contemporary. Life, said Erasmus Darwin nearly a century since, began in very minute marine forms, which gradually acquired fresh powers and larger bodies, so as imperceptibly to transform themselves into different creatures. Man, he remarked, anticipating his descendant, takes rabbits or pigeons, and alters them almost to his own fancy, by immensely changing their shapes and colours. If man can make a pouter or a fantail out of the common runt, if he can produce a piebald lop-ear from the brown wild rabbit, if he can transform Dorkings into Black Spanish, why cannot Nature, with longer time to work in, and endless lives to try with, produce all the varieties of vertebrate animals out of one single common ancestor? It was a bold idea of the Lichfield doctor—bold, at least, for the times he lived in—when Sam Johnson was held a mighty127 sage128, and physical speculation was regarded askance as having in it a dangerous touch of the devil. But the Darwins were always a bold folk, and had the courage of their opinions more than most men. So even in Lichfield, cathedral city as it was, and in the politely somnolent129 eighteenth century, Erasmus Darwin ventured to point out the probability that quadrupeds, birds, reptiles130, and men were all mere divergent descendants of a single similar original form, and even that 'one and the same kind of living filament131 is, and has been, the cause of organic life.'
The eighteenth century laughed, of course. It always laughed at all reformers. It said Dr. Darwin was very clever, but really a most eccentric man. His 'Temple of Nature,' now, and his 'Botanic Garden,' were vastly fine and charming poems—those sweet lines, you know, about poor Eliza!—but his zoological theories were built of course upon a most absurd and uncertain foundation. In prose, no sensible person could ever take the doctor seriously. A freak of genius—nothing more; a mere desire to seem clever and singular. But what a Nemesis132 the whirligig of time has brought around with it! By a strange irony133 of fate, those admired verses are now almost entirely134 forgotten; poor Eliza has survived only as our awful example of artificial pathos135; and the zoological heresies136, at which the eighteenth century shrugged137 its fat shoulders and dimpled the corners of its ample mouth, have grown to be the chief cornerstone of all accepted modern zoological science.
In the first year of the present century, Lamarck followed Erasmus Darwin's lead with an open avowal138 that in his belief all animals and plants were really descended from one or a few common ancestors. He held that organisms were just as much the result of law, not of miraculous139 interposition, as suns and worlds and all the natural phenomena140 around us generally. He saw that what naturalists141 call a species differs from what naturalists call a variety, merely in the way of being a little more distinctly marked, a little less like its nearest congeners elsewhere. He recognised the perfect gradation of forms by which in many cases one species after another merges142 into the next on either side of it. He observed the analogy between the modifications induced by man and the modifications induced by nature. In fact, he was a thorough-going and convinced evolutionist, holding every salient opinion which Society still believes to have been due to the works of Charles Darwin. In one point only, a minor point to outsiders, though a point of cardinal importance to the inner brotherhood143 of evolutionism, he did not anticipate his more famous successor. He thought organic evolution was wholly due to the direct action of surrounding circumstances, to the intercrossing of existing forms, and above all to the actual efforts of animals themselves. In other words, he had not discovered natural selection, the cardinal idea of Charles Darwin's epoch-making book. For him, the giraffe had acquired its long neck by constant reaching up to the boughs144 of trees; the monkey had acquired its opposable thumb by constant grasping at the neighbouring branches; and the serpent had acquired its sinuous145 shape by constant wriggling146 through the grass of the meadows. Charles Darwin improved upon all that by his suggestive hint of survival of the fittest, and in so far, but in so far alone, he became the real father of modern biological evolutionism.
From the days of Lamarck, to the day when Charles Darwin himself published his wonderful 'Origin of Species,' this idea that plants and animals might really have grown, instead of having been made all of a piece, kept brewing147 everywhere in the minds and brains of scientific thinkers. The notions which to the outside public were startlingly new when Darwin's book took the world by storm, were old indeed to the thinkers and workers who had long been familiar with the principle of descent with modification and the speculations148 of the Lichfield doctor or the Paris philosopher. Long before Darwin wrote his great work, Herbert Spencer had put forth in plain language every idea which the drawing-room biologists attributed to Darwin. The supporters of the development hypothesis, he said seven years earlier—yes, he called it the 'development hypothesis' in so many words—'can show that modification has effected and is effecting great changes in all organisms, subject to modifying influences.' They can show, he goes on (if I may venture to condense so great a thinker), that any existing plant or animal, placed under new conditions, begins to undergo adaptive changes of form and structure; that in successive generations these changes continue, till the plant or animal acquires totally new habits; that in cultivated plants and domesticated149 animals changes of the sort habitually150 occur; that the differences thus caused, as for example in dogs, are often greater than those on which species in the wild state are founded, and that throughout all organic nature there is at work a modifying influence of the same sort as that which they believed to have caused the differences of species—'an influence which, to all appearance, would produce in the millions of years and under the great variety of conditions which geological records imply, any amount of change.' What is this but pure Darwinism, as the drawing-room philosopher still understands the word? And yet it was written seven years before Darwin published the 'Origin of Species.'
The fact is, one might draw up quite a long list of Darwinians before Darwin. Here are a few of them—Buffon, Lamarck, Goethe, Oken, Bates, Wallace, Lecoq, Von Baer, Robert Chambers151, Matthew, and Herbert Spencer. Depend upon it, no one man ever yet of himself discovered anything. As well say that Luther made the German Reformation, that Lionardo made the Italian Renaissance152, or that Robespierre made the French Revolution, as say that Charles Darwin, and Charles Darwin alone, made the evolutionary movement, even in the restricted field of life only. A thousand predecessors153 worked up towards him; a thousand contemporaries helped to diffuse154 and to confirm his various principles.
Charles Darwin added to the primitive evolutionary idea the special notion of natural selection. That is to say, he pointed155 out that while plants and animals vary perpetually and vary indefinitely, all the varieties so produced are not equally adapted to the circumstances of the species. If the variation is a bad one, it tends to die out, because every point of disadvantage tells against the individual in the struggle for life. If the variation is a good one, it tends to persist, because every point of advantage similarly tells in the individual's favour in that ceaseless and viewless battle. It was this addition to the evolutionary concept, fortified156 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 acting157 on the special chemical constituents158 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 shrub159, 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. Psychology160 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 followers161 have been mainly instrumental in elucidating162 this aspect of the case. They have shown, or they have tried to show (for I don't want to dogmatise on the subject), how mind is gradually built up from the simplest raw elements of sense and feeling; how emotions and intellect slowly arise; how the action of the environment on the organism begets163 a nervous system of ever greater and greater complexity164, culminating at last in the brain of a Newton, a Shakespeare, or a Mendelssohn. Step by step, nerves have built themselves up out of the soft tissues as channels of communication between part and part. Sense-organs of extreme simplicity165 have first been formed on the outside of the body, where it comes most into contact with external nature. Use and wont166 have fashioned them through long ages into organs of taste and smell and touch; pigment167 spots, sensitive to light or shade, have grown by infinite gradations into the human eye or into the myriad44 facets168 of bee and beetle169; tremulous nerve-ends, responsive sympathetically to waves of sound, have tuned170 themselves at last into a perfect gamut171 in the developed ear of men and mammals. Meanwhile corresponding percipient centres have grown up in the brain, so that the coloured picture flashed by an external scene upon the eye is telegraphed from the sensitive mirror of the retina, through the many-stranded cable of the optic nerve, straight up to the appropriate headquarters in the thinking brain. Stage by stage the continuous process has gone on unceasingly, from the jelly-fish with its tiny black specks172 of eyes, through infinite steps of progression, induced by ever-widening intercourse173 with the outer world, to the final outcome in the senses and the emotions, the intellect and the will, of civilised man. Mind begins as a vague consciousness of touch or pressure on the part of some primitive, shapeless, soft creature: it ends as an organised and co-ordinated reflection of the entire physical and psychical174 universe on the part of a great cosmical philosopher.
Last of all, like diners-out at dessert, the evolutionists take to politics. Having shown us entirely to their own satisfaction the growth of suns, and systems, and worlds, and continents, and oceans, and plants, and animals, and minds, they proceed to show us the exactly analogous175 and parallel growth of communities, and nations, and languages, and religions, and customs, and arts, and institutions, and literatures. Man, the evolving savage176, as Tylor, Lubbock, and others have proved for us, slowly putting off his brute177 aspect derived178 from his early ape-like ancestors, learned by infinitesimal degrees the use of fire, the mode of manufacturing stone hatchets179 and flint arrowheads, the earliest beginnings of the art of pottery180. With drill or flint he became the Prometheus to his own small heap of sticks and dry leaves among the tertiary forests. By his nightly camp-fire he beat out gradually his excited gesture-language and his oral speech. He tamed the dog, the horse, the cow, the camel. He taught himself to hew48 small clearings in the woodland, and to plant the banana, the yam, the bread-fruit, and the coco-nut. He picked and improved the seeds of his wild cereals till he made himself from grass-like grains his barley181, his oats, his wheat, his Indian corn. In time, he dug out ore from mines, and learnt the use first of gold, next of silver, then of copper182, tin, bronze, and iron. Side by side with these long secular changes, he evolved the family, communal183 or patriarchal, polygamic or monogamous. He built the hut, the house, and the palace. He clothed or adorned184 himself first in skins and leaves and feathers; next in woven wool and fibre; last of all in purple and fine linen185, and fared sumptuously186 every day. He gathered into hordes187, tribes, and nations; he chose himself a king, gave himself laws, and built up great empires in Egypt, Assyria, China, and Peru. He raised him altars, Stonehenges and Karnaks. His picture-writing grew into hieroglyphs188 and cuneiforms, and finally emerged, by imperceptible steps, into alphabetic189 symbols, the raw material of the art of printing. His dug-out canoe culminates190 in the iron-clad and the 'Great Eastern'; his boomerang and slingstone in the Woolwich infant; his boiling pipkin and his wheeled car in the locomotive engine; his picture-message in the telephone and the Atlantic cable. Here, where the course of evolution has really been most marvellous, its steps have been all more distinctly historical; so that nobody now doubts the true descent of Italian, French, and Spanish from provincial191 Latin, or the successive growth of the trireme, the 'Great Harry,' the 'Victory,' and the 'Minotaur' from the coracles or praus of prehistoric192 antiquity193.
The grand conception of the uniform origin and development of all things, earthly or sidereal, thus summed up for us in the one word evolution, belongs by right neither to Charles Darwin nor to any other single thinker. It is the joint194 product of innumerable workers, all working up, though some of them unconsciously, towards a grand final unified195 philosophy of the cosmos196. In astronomy, Kant, Laplace, and the Herschels; in geology, Hutton, Lyell, and the Geikies; in biology, Buffon, Lamarck, the Darwins, Huxley, and Spencer; in psychology, Spencer, Romanes, Sully, and Ribot; in sociology, Spencer, Tylor, Lubbock, and De Mortillet—these have been the chief evolutionary teachers and discoverers. But the use of the word evolution itself, and the establishment of the general evolutionary theory as a system of philosophy applicable to the entire universe, we owe to one man alone—Herbert Spencer. Many other minds—from Galileo and Copernicus, from Kepler and Newton, from Linn?us and Tournefort, from D'Alembert and Diderot, nay, even, in a sense, from Aristotle and Lucretius—had been piling together the vast collection of raw material from which that great and stately superstructure was to be finally edified197. But the architect who placed each block in its proper niche198, who planned and designed the whole elevation, who planted the building firmly on the rock and poised199 the coping-stone on the topmost pinnacle200, was the author of the 'System of Synthetic201 Philosophy,' and none other. It is a strange proof of how little people know about their own ideas, that among the thousands who talk glibly every day of evolution, not ten per cent. are probably aware that both word and conception are alike due to the commanding intelligence and vast generalising power of Herbert Spencer.
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cholera
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| n.霍乱 | |
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pervades
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| v.遍及，弥漫( pervade的第三人称单数 ) | |
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permeates
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| 弥漫( permeate的第三人称单数 )； 遍布； 渗入； 渗透 | |
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rampant
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| adj.(植物)蔓生的；狂暴的，无约束的 | |
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glibly
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essentially
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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descended
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gorilla
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briefly
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evolutionary
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| adj.进化的；演化的，演变的；[生]进化论的 | |
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enumerated
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| v.列举，枚举，数( enumerate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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parody
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| n.打油诗文，诙谐的改编诗文，拙劣的模仿；v.拙劣模仿，作模仿诗文 | |
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nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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geographical
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| adj.地理的；地区(性)的 | |
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modification
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| n.修改，改进，缓和，减轻 | |
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memoirs
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| n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数) | |
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hem
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| n.贴边，镶边；vt.缝贴边；(in)包围，限制 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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speculative
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| adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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infancy
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| n.婴儿期；幼年期；初期 | |
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concurring
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| 同时发生的，并发的 | |
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chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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28
regenerate
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| vt.使恢复，使新生；vi.恢复，再生；adj.恢复的 | |
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29
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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30
founders
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| n.创始人( founder的名词复数 ) | |
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31
descried
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| adj.被注意到的，被发现的，被看到的 | |
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muddle
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| n.困惑，混浊状态；vt.使混乱，使糊涂，使惊呆；vi.胡乱应付，混乱 | |
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apprehend
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| vt.理解，领悟，逮捕，拘捕，忧虑 | |
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apprehended
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| 逮捕，拘押( apprehend的过去式和过去分词 )； 理解 | |
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formulated
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| v.构想出( formulate的过去式和过去分词 )；规划；确切地阐述；用公式表示 | |
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36
astronomical
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| adj.天文学的，（数字）极大的 | |
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37
haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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nebula
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| n.星云，喷雾剂 | |
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39
prim
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| adj.拘泥形式的，一本正经的；n.循规蹈矩，整洁；adv.循规蹈矩地，整洁地 | |
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40
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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41
secular
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| n.牧师，凡人；adj.世俗的，现世的，不朽的 | |
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42
condensation
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| n.压缩，浓缩；凝结的水珠 | |
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43
myriads
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| n.无数，极大数量( myriad的名词复数 ) | |
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44
myriad
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| adj.无数的；n.无数，极大数量 | |
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45
anticipation
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| n.预期，预料，期望 | |
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46
component
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| n.组成部分，成分，元件；adj.组成的，合成的 | |
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47
heterogeneous
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| adj.庞杂的；异类的 | |
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48
hew
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| v.砍；伐；削 | |
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49
lucidity
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| n.明朗，清晰，透明 | |
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50
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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51
denser
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| adj. 不易看透的, 密集的, 浓厚的, 愚钝的 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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53
galaxy
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| n.星系；银河系；一群(杰出或著名的人物) | |
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fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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sidereal
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| adj.恒星的 | |
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56
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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appreciable
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| adj.明显的，可见的，可估量的，可觉察的 | |
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58
outermost
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| adj.最外面的，远离中心的 | |
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59
Neptune
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| n.海王星 | |
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60
converge
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| vi.会合；聚集，集中；(思想、观点等)趋近 | |
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61
relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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62
physicists
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| 物理学家( physicist的名词复数 ) | |
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63
extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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64
geologists
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| 地质学家，地质学者( geologist的名词复数 ) | |
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65
lessened
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| 减少的，减弱的 | |
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66
revolving
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| adj.旋转的，轮转式的；循环的v.（使）旋转( revolve的现在分词 )；细想 | |
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67
axis
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| n.轴，轴线，中心线；坐标轴，基准线 | |
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68
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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69
Saturn
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| n.农神，土星 | |
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70
reminders
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| n.令人回忆起…的东西( reminder的名词复数 )；提醒…的东西；（告知该做某事的）通知单；提示信 | |
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71
luminary
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| n.名人，天体 | |
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72
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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73
astronomers
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| n.天文学者，天文学家( astronomer的名词复数 ) | |
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74
investigators
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| n.调查者，审查者( investigator的名词复数 ) | |
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75
totters
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| v.走得或动得不稳( totter的第三人称单数 )；踉跄；蹒跚；摇摇欲坠 | |
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76
cardinal
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| n.(天主教的)红衣主教；adj.首要的，基本的 | |
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77
celestial
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| adj.天体的；天上的 | |
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78
mundane
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| adj.平凡的；尘世的；宇宙的 | |
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79
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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80
volcanic
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| adj.火山的；象火山的；由火山引起的 | |
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81
precursors
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| n.先驱( precursor的名词复数 )；先行者；先兆；初期形式 | |
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82
contraction
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| n.缩略词，缩写式，害病 | |
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83
draughts
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| n. <英>国际跳棋 | |
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84
sketchy
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| adj.写生的，写生风格的，概略的 | |
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85
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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86
regularity
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| n.规律性，规则性；匀称，整齐 | |
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87
wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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88
evaporation
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| n.蒸发，消失 | |
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89
brooks
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| n.小溪( brook的名词复数 ) | |
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90
alpine
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| adj.高山的；n.高山植物 | |
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depressed
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| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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92
sediment
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| n.沉淀，沉渣，沉积(物) | |
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93
countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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94
marine
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| adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵 | |
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95
ooze
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| n.软泥，渗出物；vi.渗出，泄漏；vt.慢慢渗出，流露 | |
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96
crumbling
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| adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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97
gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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98
conglomerate
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| n.综合商社，多元化集团公司 | |
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99
watershed
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| n.转折点，分水岭，分界线 | |
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100
stump
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| n.残株，烟蒂，讲演台；v.砍断，蹒跚而走 | |
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101
deltas
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| 希腊字母表中第四个字母( delta的名词复数 )； （河口的）三角洲 | |
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102
shingle
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| n.木瓦板；小招牌(尤指医生或律师挂的营业招牌)；v.用木瓦板盖（屋顶）；把（女子头发）剪短 | |
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103
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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104
gorge
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| n.咽喉，胃，暴食，山峡；v.塞饱，狼吞虎咽地吃 | |
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105
retarded
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| a.智力迟钝的，智力发育迟缓的 | |
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106
elevation
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| n.高度；海拔；高地；上升；提高 | |
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107
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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108
cataclysms
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| n.（突然降临的）大灾难( cataclysm的名词复数 ) | |
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109
zoologists
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| 动物学家( zoologist的名词复数 ) | |
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110
botanists
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| n.植物学家，研究植物的人( botanist的名词复数 ) | |
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111
eminently
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| adv.突出地；显著地；不寻常地 | |
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112
dubious
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| adj.怀疑的，无把握的；有问题的，靠不住的 | |
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113
tottering
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| adj.蹒跚的，动摇的v.走得或动得不稳( totter的现在分词 )；踉跄；蹒跚；摇摇欲坠 | |
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114
monarchy
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| n.君主，最高统治者；君主政体，君主国 | |
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115
prone
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| adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的 | |
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116
outright
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| adv.坦率地；彻底地；立即；adj.无疑的；彻底的 | |
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117
modifications
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| n.缓和( modification的名词复数 )；限制；更改；改变 | |
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118
conclusive
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| adj.最后的，结论的；确凿的，消除怀疑的 | |
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119
promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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120
imprisoned
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| 下狱，监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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121
varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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122
lizard
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| n.蜥蜴，壁虎 | |
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123
blandly
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| adv.温和地，殷勤地 | |
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124
vagary
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| n.妄想，不可测之事，异想天开 | |
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125
ironical
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| adj.讽刺的，冷嘲的 | |
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126
legitimate
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| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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127
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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128
sage
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| n.圣人，哲人；adj.贤明的，明智的 | |
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129
somnolent
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| adj.想睡的，催眠的；adv.瞌睡地；昏昏欲睡地；使人瞌睡地 | |
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130
reptiles
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| n.爬行动物，爬虫( reptile的名词复数 ) | |
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131
filament
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| n.细丝；长丝；灯丝 | |
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132
nemesis
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| n.给以报应者，复仇者，难以对付的敌手 | |
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133
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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134
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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135
pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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136
heresies
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| n.异端邪说，异教( heresy的名词复数 ) | |
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137
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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138
avowal
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| n.公开宣称，坦白承认 | |
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139
miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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140
phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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141
naturalists
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| n.博物学家( naturalist的名词复数 )；（文学艺术的）自然主义者 | |
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142
merges
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| （使）混合( merge的第三人称单数 )； 相融； 融入； 渐渐消失在某物中 | |
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143
brotherhood
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| n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊 | |
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144
boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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145
sinuous
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| adj.蜿蜒的，迂回的 | |
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146
wriggling
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| v.扭动，蠕动，蜿蜒行进( wriggle的现在分词 )；（使身体某一部位）扭动；耍滑不做，逃避（应做的事等）；蠕蠕 | |
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147
brewing
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| n. 酿造, 一次酿造的量 动词brew的现在分词形式 | |
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148
speculations
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| n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断 | |
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149
domesticated
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| adj.喜欢家庭生活的；（指动物）被驯养了的v.驯化( domesticate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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150
habitually
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| ad.习惯地，通常地 | |
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151
chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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152
renaissance
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| n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴 | |
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153
predecessors
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| n.前任( predecessor的名词复数 )；前辈；（被取代的）原有事物；前身 | |
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154
diffuse
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| v.扩散；传播；adj.冗长的；四散的，弥漫的 | |
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155
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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156
fortified
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| adj. 加强的 | |
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157
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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158
constituents
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| n.选民( constituent的名词复数 )；成分；构成部分；要素 | |
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159
shrub
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| n.灌木，灌木丛 | |
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160
psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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161
followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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162
elucidating
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| v.阐明，解释( elucidate的现在分词 ) | |
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163
begets
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| v.为…之生父( beget的第三人称单数 )；产生，引起 | |
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164
complexity
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| n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物 | |
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165
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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166
wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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167
pigment
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| n.天然色素，干粉颜料 | |
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168
facets
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| n.（宝石或首饰的）小平面( facet的名词复数 )；（事物的）面；方面 | |
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169
beetle
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| n.甲虫，近视眼的人 | |
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170
tuned
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| adj.调谐的，已调谐的v.调音( tune的过去式和过去分词 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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171
gamut
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| n.全音阶，(一领域的)全部知识 | |
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172
specks
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| n.眼镜；斑点，微粒，污点( speck的名词复数 ) | |
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173
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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174
psychical
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| adj.有关特异功能现象的；有关特异功能官能的；灵魂的；心灵的 | |
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175
analogous
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| adj.相似的；类似的 | |
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176
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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177
brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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178
derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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179
hatchets
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| n.短柄小斧( hatchet的名词复数 )；恶毒攻击；诽谤；休战 | |
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180
pottery
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| n.陶器，陶器场 | |
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181
barley
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| n.大麦，大麦粒 | |
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182
copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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183
communal
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| adj.公有的，公共的，公社的，公社制的 | |
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184
adorned
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| [计]被修饰的 | |
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185
linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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186
sumptuously
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| 奢侈地，豪华地 | |
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187
hordes
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| n.移动着的一大群( horde的名词复数 )；部落 | |
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188
hieroglyphs
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| n.象形字（如古埃及等所用的）( hieroglyph的名词复数 )；秘密的或另有含意的书写符号 | |
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189
alphabetic
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| adj.照字母次序的，字母的 | |
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190
culminates
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| v.达到极点( culminate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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191
provincial
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| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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192
prehistoric
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| adj.（有记载的）历史以前的，史前的，古老的 | |
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193
antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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194
joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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195
unified
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| (unify 的过去式和过去分词)； 统一的； 统一标准的； 一元化的 | |
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196
cosmos
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| n.宇宙；秩序，和谐 | |
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197
edified
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| v.开导，启发( edify的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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198
niche
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| n.壁龛；合适的职务(环境、位置等) | |
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199
poised
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| a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
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200
pinnacle
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| n.尖塔，尖顶，山峰；(喻)顶峰 | |
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201
synthetic
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| adj.合成的，人工的；综合的；n.人工制品 | |
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