Darwin's Addition to the Evolution Idea.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 255, 14 April 1888, Page 6

Darwin's Addition to the Evolution Idea.

A ''CokmiiliL ' article on " Evolution "' is particularly brilliant and comprehensible, atid among many good passages the description of Darwiu\ work i^ specially worth quoting. Chailes? Pans in added to the primitive evolutionary idea the special notion ot natuial — that i.s to hay, ho pointed out that while plant-* and animals \ary perpetually, and \aiy inderinitely, all the vaiieties m) produced are not equally adapted to the eneum^tance^ of the species. If the \ariation is a l"»ad one, it tends to die out, hecaufcu e\eiy point of disadvantage tells agiiu^t the individual in the foi life. If the is a good one, it tt_nd-> to pev^ist, because every point of advantage .similarly tells in the individual'? fax our in that cea*-eless and viewless battle It/ was this addition to the evolutionary concept, fortified by Darwin's powerful advocacy of the general principle of descent with modification, that won o\er the whole Morld to the "Darwinian tLeory." Before Darwin many men of science were evolutionists ; after Darwin, all men of science become so at once, and the rest of the world is rapidly preparing to follow their leader ship, As applied to life, then, the evolutionary idea is biielly this—that plants and animals have all a natural origin from a single primitive living creature, which it&elt was the produce of light and heat acting on the special chemical constituents of an ancient ocean. Starting fiom that single early form, they have gone on developing e\er since, from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, assuming ever more varied shapes, till at last they have reached their present variety of tree and shrub, and herb and seaweed, of beast and bird, and fish and creeping insect. Evolution throughout has been one and continuous, from nebula to sun, from gascloud to planet, from early jelly-speck to man or elephant. So, at least, evolutionists say — and of course they ought to know most about it.