Nature versus natural selection : an essay on organic evolution / by Charles Clement Coe.

Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nature versus natural selection : an essay on organic evolution / by Charles Clement Coe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    THE THEORY DEFINED AND TESTS PROPOSED. “ Old things need not be therefore true, O brother men ! nor yet the new. Ah ! still awhile the old thought retain, And yet consider it again.”—A. CLOUGH. By what process have all the different kinds of animal and vegetable organisms become what we now see them to be ? This is the problem which has from time to time excited the interest of solitary thinkers, and which, within the last thirty or forty years, has profoundly agitated the scientific world. Two answers have been given to this question. On the one hand, it used to be asserted (it is still asserted by some) that the different kinds of animals and plants are the lineal descendants of organisms similar to themselves, and that those remote ancestors suddenly appeared upon the earth, some six thousand years ago, endowed with the power of reproducing their like from generation to generation. On the other hand, it is con- tended that all existing kinds of organisms, however complex, have been produced by successive changes from the simplest and least complex forms of life. The latter is the opinion of the majority of scientific men at the present day. This process is designated by the term Organic Evolution : and evolution is defined by Mr. Herbert Spencer as the result of the joint action of growth or increase in size, and of development or increase in [the complexity of] structure.* * The Principles of Biology, i., p. ijj, note.
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