President Seelye's inference that because nations decay there is no evolution of humanity, does not appear to be conclusive. The considerations alleged as making the doctrine of Darwin's discussions "false to fact" seem to us to be in harmony with it, and the natural consequence of it. President Seelye appeals to the historic phenomena of deterioration, disintegration, and decay among nations and civilizations as disproving the principle of development; but how is decay made possible except by previous growth, and how can a community degenerate unless it has first been organized and unfolded? The conclusion is certainly logical that before civilizations can dissolve they must first be evolved, so that to affirm a "law of deterioration" is necessarily to imply a previous "law of evolution." In the normal course of Nature the effete and outworn must pass away. The spent molecules of our tissues have to be eliminated, that more vitalized particles may replace them. Individuals when they get old and useless die out of the community, that their younger and more vigorous successors may carry on the work. On the larger scale, but in the same way, nations die out as civilization progresses; while civilizations themselves are spent in the larger advancement of humanity. We may brood with morbid sentiment over excretion, decay, and death, until there seems to be nothing else; yet these are normal things, and are simply the correlates and the consequences of growth and life. President Seelye declares that in the past career of humanity "degeneration and decay vastly preponderate;" he should have explained how that can be—how there could be a fall without a previous rise to make it possible. If he means that much the greater number of nations and civilizations come apparently to naught, we have simply to say that this is the law in the realm of life: the eggs that are wasted and the seeds that are scattered and lost vastly preponderate over those that mature. Nature is profuse in the waste of life, and sacrifices multitudes where but few are perfected. But is not this ruthless and wide-spread destruction only a part of Nature's policy for the attainment of grand results? The evolutionists affirm continuity of influence in the sphere of life, and that some of the nations and civilizations which decline and die pass on the impulses which they have gained to reappear in succeeding and higher stages of national and racial development. President Seelye recognizes this principle of continuity in saying, "The lamp which lights one nation in its advancement has been always lighted by a lamp behind it." National advancement is here conceded, and also a series of advancements, each depending upon a preceding one. But is there nothing gained by accumulated experience? Is there no general progress resulting from the advancement of nations in succession and under different circumstances? If the dissolution of states and the decay of civilizations do not break the continuity of those agencies by which man is civilized, how can they hinder that gradual improvement of the process and heightening of the effects which evolution implies as the consequence of prolonged, varied, and accumulated national experiences?
If we try President Seelye's logic in a more special case, its quality will, perhaps, be more apparent. "Behold,"
