Seventy years ago Charles Darwin published his book, "The Origin of
Species," in which he defied the theological dogma of his time by the
shocking idea that life had evolved by many stages of progress from the
diatom to man. This of course did not conform to the story of the Garden
of Eden, and so "Darwinism" was fought as an invention of the devil, and
in the interior of America there are numerous sectarian colleges where
the dread term "evolution" is spoken in awed whispers. Only the other
day I read in my newspaper the triumphant proclamation of some clergyman
that "Darwinism" had been overthrown. This reverend gentleman had got
mixed up because some biologists were disputing some detail of the
method by which the evolution of species had been brought about. Do
species change by the gradual elimination of the unfit, or do they
change by sudden leaps, the "mutation" theory of de Vries? Are acquired
powers transmitted to posterity, or is the germ plasm unaffected by its
environment? Concerning such questions the scientists debate. But the
fact that life has evolved in an ordered series from the lower forms to
the higher, and that each individual reproduces in embryo and in infancy
the history of this long process--these facts are now the basis of all
modern thinking, and as generally accepted as the rotation of the earth.
You may study this process of evolution from the outside, in the
multitude of forms which it has assumed and in their reactions one to
another; or you may study it from the inside in your own soul, the
emotions which accompany it, the impulse or craving which impels it, the
_elan vital_, as it is called by the French philosopher Bergson. The
Christians call it love, and Nietzsche, who hated Christianity, called
it "the will to power," and persuaded himself that it was the opposite
of love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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