George Frederick Wright.
Oberlin, Ohio, Aug. 10, 1903.
FOREWORD.
Before entering upon the discussion we need to enquire as to the meaning of the word "Evolution" as applied to the theory. We must also ask a definition of the theory as given by its best-known writers; and also enquire as to the spheres it claims to cover. To clearly state a question is often half the task of solving it.
MEANING OF EVOLUTION.
We must distinguish between the ordinary conversational sense of the word Evolution and the technical use of the term as designating a theory by that name. We speak of the evolution of the seed into the plant and the further evolution of the flower and the fruit, meaning by our words merely the natural progressive action of the life within the plant. This principle the evolutionist applies to the whole universe which he says came in a similar way.
Again we use the word Evolution to describe any succession of things which show progress. Such an instance is given us in the change in appliances for the use of steam from the time when its power was first observed in the lifting lid of the tea-kettle to the time when it drives the latest ocean liner. This is, however, simply the succession of a series of things in advancing order, but without vital connection. Their real relation is outside of themselves in the minds of the inventors who, in turn, may be many and widely separated. Succession is not Evolution nor does it prove or imply such a process. That demands an intimate and genetic connection between the things as they appear, the higher growing out of the substance of the lower in physical things and the intellectual likewise.
The theory of Evolution asserts that from a nebulous mass of primeval substance, whose origin it never attempts to account for, there came by natural processes, as a flower from a bud, and fruit from the flower, all that we see and know in the heavens above and the earth beneath.