There has often been slipping back and degeneracy in the course of evolution, but the big fact is that there has been progress. For millions of years Life has been slowly creeping upwards, and if we compare the highest animals--Birds and Mammals--with their predecessors, we must admit that they are more controlled, more masters of their fate, with more mentality. Evolution is on the whole _integrative_; that is to say, it makes against instability and disorder, and towards harmony and progress. Even in the rise of Birds and Mammals we can discern that the evolutionary process was making towards a fuller embodiment or expression of what Man values most--control, freedom, understanding, and love. The advance of animal life through the ages has been chequered, but on the whole it has been an advance towards increasing fullness, freedom, and fitness of life. In the study of this advance--the central fact of Organic Evolution--there is assuredly much for Man's instruction and much for his encouragement. Evidences of Evolution In all this, it may be said, the fact of evolution has been taken for granted, but what are the evidences? Perhaps it should be frankly answered that the idea of evolution, that the present is the child of the past and the parent of the future, cannot be _proved_ as one may prove the Law of Gravitation. All that can be done is to show that it is a key--a way of looking at things--that fits the facts. There is no lock that it does not open. But if the facts that the evolution theory vividly interprets be called the evidences of its validity, there is no lack of them. There is _historical_ evidence; and what is more eloquent than the general fact that fishes emerge before amphibians, and these before reptiles, and these before birds, and so on? There are wonderfully complete fossil series, e.g. among cuttlefishes, in which we can almost see evolution in process. The pedigree of horse and elephant and crocodile is in general very convincing, though it is to be confessed that there are other cases in regard to which we have no light. Who can tell, for instance, how Vertebrates arose or from what origin? There is _embryological_ evidence, for the individual development often reads like an abbreviated recapitulation of the presumed evolution of the race. The mammal's visceral clefts are tell-tale evidence of remote aquatic ancestors, breathing by gills. Something is known in regard to the historical evolution of antlers in bygone ages; the Red Deer of to-day recapitulates at least the general outlines of the history. The individual development of an asymmetrical flat-fish, like a plaice or sole, which rests and swims on one side, tells us plainly that its ancestors were symmetrical fishes.