The Doctrine of Evolution | Page 3

are the materials of science, but
science is not metaphysics or philosophy or belief, even though the
student who employs scientific method is inevitably brought to
consider problems belonging to these diverse fields of thought. A study
of nervous mechanism and organic structure leads to the philosophical
problem of the freedom of the will; questions as to the evolution of
mind and the way mind and matter are related force the investigator to
consider the problem of immortality. But these and similar subjects in
the field of extra-science are beyond its sphere for the very good reason
that scientific method, which we are to define shortly, cannot be
employed for their solution. Evolution is a science; it is a description of
nature's order, and its materials are facts only. In method and content it
is the very science of sciences, describing all and holding true
throughout each one.
The overwhelming importance of knowing about natural laws and
universal principles is not often realized. What have we to do with
evolution and science? Are we not too busy with the ordering of our
immediate affairs to concern ourselves with such remote matters? So it
may appear to many, who think that the study of life and its origin, and
of the vital facts about plants and animals may be interesting and may
possess a certain intellectual value, but nothing more. The investigation
of man and of men and of human life is regarded by the majority as a
mere cultural exercise which has no further result than the recording of
present facts and past histories; but it is far otherwise. Science and
evolution must deal with mere details about the world at large, and with
human ideals and with life and conduct; and while their purpose is to
describe how nature works now and how it has progressed in the past,
their fullest value is realized in the sure guidance they provide for our
lives. This cannot be clear until we reach the later portions of our
subject, but even at the outset we must recognize that knowledge of the

great rules of nature's game, in which we must play our parts, is the
most valuable intellectual possession we can obtain. If man and his
place in nature, his mind and social obligations, become intelligible, if
right and wrong, good and evil, and duty come to have more definite
and assignable values through an understanding of the results of
science, then life may be fuller and richer, better and more effective, in
direct proportion to this understanding of the harmony of the universe.
And so we must approach the study of the several divisions of our
subject in this frame of mind. We must meet many difficulties, of
which the chief one is perhaps our own human nature. For we as men
are involved, and it is hard indeed to take an impersonal point of
view,--to put aside all thoughts of the consequences to us of evolution,
if it is true. Yet emotion and purely human interest are disturbing
elements in intellectual development which hamper the efforts of
reason to form assured conceptions. We must disregard for the time
those insistent questions as to higher human nature, even though we
must inevitably consider them at the last. Indeed, all the human
problems must be put aside until we have prepared the way for their
study by learning what evolution means, what a living organism is, and
how sure is the evidence of organic transformation. When we know
what nature is like and what natural processes are, then we may take up
the questions of supreme and deep concern about our own human lives.
* * * * *
Human curiosity has ever demanded answers to questions about the
world and its make-up. The primitive savage was concerned primarily
with the everyday work of seeking food and building huts and carrying
on warfare, and yet even he found time to classify the objects of his
world and to construct some theory about the powers that made them.
His attainments may seem crude and childish to-day, but they were the
beginnings of classified knowledge, which advanced or stood still as
men found more or less time for observation and thought. Freed from
the strife of primeval and medieval life, more and more observers and
thinkers have enlarged the boundaries and developed the territory of the
known. The history of human thought itself demonstrates an evolution

which began with the savages' vague interpretation of the "what" and
the "why" of the universe, and culminates in the science of to-day.
What, now, is a science? To many people the word denotes something
cold and unfeeling and rigid, or something that is somehow apart from
daily life and antagonistic to freedom of thought. But this is far from