A new generation of evolutionists has within the past twenty years arisen which holds that the changes in the organizations of plants and animals do not come by slow growth of favorable characteristics, but arise suddenly. Such is the "Mutation" theory of Hugo de Vries. But science has failed to receive this and similar theories with the same acclaim which once greeted Darwin's _"Origin of Species."_ Naturalists have become cautious. They remember the inglorious collapse of the Darwinian regime and they are slow to hail another "Abraham of scientific thought." They are, in a general way, believers in some kind of evolution; but they prefer not to specify exactly the laws which have been operative in past "geological time." It is only in high-school texts in physical geography, zoology, and botany, that the evolutionary theory as propounded by Darwin is still treated as if it enjoyed among scientific men the same respect as the multiplication table. Speaking in the Darwinian dialect we should say that the authors of these school-texts constitute a case of "arrested development." CHAPTER EIGHT. A Scientific Creed Outworn. The preceding chapter concludes our investigation of that stage of evolutionistic thought which owes its origin and name to Charles Darwin. The question suggests itself, do scientists to-day believe as Darwin did? A great many do. Darwin remains to many scientists what Huxley, I think, called him, the "Abraham of scientific thought." But if we examine the roster of these, we find that they belong, with a single exception (Haeckel), to those whose departments of investigation have nothing to do with the study of life forms (biology, zoology, botany), and who consequently do not speak from first hand knowledge of the facts. Anthropologists (students of the races of man), sociologists, psychologists, and many educated persons generally, accept the Darwinian scheme of evolution as a fact and build their theories on it in turn. They accept the theory and ask no question. The vogue which Darwinism still enjoys among writers of school-texts has already been noted. However, the specifically Darwinian phase of evolutionistic thought, as laid down in Spencer's interminable volumes, for instance, is given up by reputable biologists the world over. There is pretty much of a Babel among them, when it comes to a definition of evolution. There are dozens of theories,--mutation, orthogenesis, Weismanism, Mendelianism, etc.,-- and each has its adherents,--but they agree in one thing, that "Natural Selection" does not account for the forms of life on earth to-day.