The Gospel of Evolution: From "The Atheistic Platform", Twelve LecturesAveling, Edward B.
Religion
The Gospel of Evolution: From "The Atheistic Platform", Twelve Lectures
Aveling, Edward B.
Evolution
From all that I have just said it will be understood that the Gospel
of Evolution has a wider significance than popular notions imply. The
general idea, as to Evolution, that it is synonymous with Darwinism, is
not accurate. The Darwinian teaching is only a part, though in one sense
it is the most important part, of the Evolution truth. Evolution itself
means, as we have seen, the unity of phenomena.
All things are, according to this new principle, one huge continuity.
Whilst Darwinism shows that man is not distinct from the lower
animals, and that all species of animals, and all species of plants are
artificial groups gliding one into the other, just as in their gradual
development they glided one out of the other, Evolution goes further
than this and does not fare worse. For the evolutionist not only
believes that which the works of Darwin have made an assured truth, but
he believes that plants and animals have had a common parentage, that
living matter has originated from the non-living, that there has been no
break in the vast series of phenomena at any point.
Some of the general grounds for this belief have been given. Let us look
rapidly at some of the more special. The principle of the conservation
of energy already mentioned indirectly is, in a sense, the starting
point of thought on this subject. Grove's essay on the "Correlation of
the Physical Forces," published a few years since, was the first clear
enunciation of the generalisation towards which so many observations
had led. When he reminded men that chemical action, electricity, heat,
sound, light, magnetism, and life were all convertible, one into
the other, and thus convertible in definite numerical proportions,
mathematically calculable, the keynote of the idea of Evolution had been
struck.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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