What is this, after all? It is not socialism. It is not anarchy. It is neither democracy nor republicanism. It is EVOLUTION. It does not depend on the temporary success of party governments for its action. It does not even solely result from our unique position or our independence wrested from Great Britain. Back of it lie the broad principles of British liberty, of common law, of Magna Charta won from King John on the plains of Runnymede. Back of it is the great wave of democracy arising out of the darkness of the Middle Ages. Back of it are the injunctions of Him of Galilee who taught the natural law as no man ever taught before. Back of it is Roman jurisprudence and Greek art and culture and the early efforts of the days when Cadmus brought the alphabet to Europe with his Phœnician colony. Indeed, back of it lies the primeval impulse of the first man, God-endowed, ape-descended, who stood upon his feet and began to think. We may carry our thoughts still further to the times when the red sunlight first filtered through the thick clouds upon an uninhabited world, and still further may we go in thought into the ages of eternity, and assert with fullest confidence that the principles of progress to-day working themselves out in politics are but the reflection of the divine ideals founded in the laws of nature. Can the course of such progress be turned back? Can we despair of the future in the light of all the past? Is not the general movement onward and upward? Will not the sneers at ephemeral phases of our American politics pass away with the incidents which they justly condemn, while the principles of progress remain forever? THOMAS B. PRESTON. ARTIFICIAL SELECTION AND THE MARRIAGE PROBLEM.[7]