The Greek philosophers from Thales to Aristotle, more than two thousand
years ago, entertained the notion that all things have been developed
from primitive beginnings. This view was shared in the fourth century
of the Christian era by St. Augustine, probably the greatest of the
church “Fathers.” Then came the Dark Age,—an intellectual night of a
thousand years—an era when reason and science were buried in the grave
of superstition,—and at its close, the Revival of Learning, the dawn of
the modern period.
In that golden Renaissance of rational thought and scientific
speculation, philosophical thinkers—Bruno, Campanella and
others—influenced by the theories of the Greeks and by the astronomical
discoveries of Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo, sought to explain the
universe as an unfoldment from a simple, early condition of matter.
But such speculation was denounced as dangerous, and Bruno died a
martyr in the flames. Still the idea that there has been an evolution
in nature persisted and grew, and the writings of Spinoza in Holland,
of Locke in England, of Kant in Germany, of Lamarck in France,—to
mention but a few philosophers—encouraged men to think that the secret
of existence lay in the fact of growth.
Then came the greatest of books on the development of living things.
In 1859, Darwin gave the world his “Origin of Species,” a work which
laid the foundation of the science of evolution. Earlier thinkers had
groped and guessed with little knowledge of Nature’s laws. But Darwin
had discovered the laws of organic life, and, with an amazing array of
evidential facts patiently observed and gathered in a score of years,
he was able to support his view that species have been evolved “by
means of natural selection” through “the preservation or favored races
in the struggle of life.”
In the interest of the six-days creation legend, a storm of theological
wrath assailed the great man’s head. Knowing that truth was on his
side, the saint of science paid no heed to slander and patiently
worked on. And in twenty-three years he wrought a greater, a more
farreaching revolution in the thoughts of intelligent mankind than
was ever accomplished by any other of the sons of men; and when he
died, England was glad to honor his dust with burial in her sacred
Westminster Abbey.
Evolution is as firmly established to-day as the fact of gravitation.
The intellect of the whole world acclaims it as the one and only
principle that explains the phenomena of existence. True it is, that
many naturalists disagree with Darwin with respect to some of the
details of the _process_ by which evolution has been brought about, but
these men are one and all thoroughgoing evolutionists. There is no man
of science living who believes in special creation. Every university
now teaches evolution.
Every science studies its facts to-day, in the light of growth and
change from simplicity to complexity. The astronomer traces the
course of evolution in the heavens; the geologist follows the path of
evolution in the crust of the earth; the biologist threads the process
of growth through succeeding forms of life; the psychologist considers
the gradual emergence of mind from the lowly animal to civilized man;
the sociologist elucidates the progressive development of society
from its rude barbaric dawn; the inquiries of the anthropologist
illuminate the evolution of religion, of government, of law. Every
phase of existence and life and thought opens its treasury of secrets
when touched by evolution’s master key. Where all the facts point
resistlessly to one conclusion, that conclusion must perforce be
accepted as true. The foundations of evolution are laid in all the
active phenomena of nature and the super-structure is being fashioned
by all the facts of growth and change.
The purpose of this little book is to set before the busy reader some
of the principal facts illustrating the evolution of the universe and
of living things.
MARSHALL J. GAUVIN
Pittsburgh, Pa., August 30, 1921.