CREATION BY EVOLUTION
suns and planets, or which mould mountains and seas, or which determine the formation of crystals or the accumulation of rocks, differ in certain ways from those which modify generations of life. We therefore usually treat orderly change in organized beings under a special head, that of organic evolution. For this a better term, bionomics, “life-ways,” has been suggested by Professor Patrick Geddes, of Edinburgh.
The theory of organic evolution is, in brief, that in our world no living thing and no succession of living things remain exactly the same for any period of time, long or short; and furthermore, to repeat, that all change is orderly, never the result of accident or caprice or favoritism. In Huxley's words: “Nothing endures save the flow of energy and the rational order that pervades it.”
As a science, organic evolution, or bionomics, comprises all that we know or that we may reasonably deduce from our actual knowledge of the history, development, and divergence of living creatures on the earth. It involves the idea of the “transmutation” of species (or kinds of animals or plants) through natural causes (there are no others), their characteristics varying for cause, with time and with space. To one having a fair knowledge of the facts concerned no different working hypothesis is now conceivable; and a working hypothesis becomes a part of science when every rival hypothesis has ceased to work.
The evidence for organic evolution is cumulative. All creatures show evidences of evolutionary processes, which are revealed on every hand. Now that we have in some degree the clue to life and reproduction, every plant, every animal, every man, every institution appears (in its degree) not alone as an argument for but as a demonstration of evolution. Demonstrations precede logic and stand above
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