THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY A BRIEF STATEMENT FOR GENERAL READERS BY JOSEPH Y. BERGEN, JR. AND FANNY D. BERGEN BOSTON LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS NEW YORK CHARLES T. DILLINGHAM 1884 PREFACE. IN the preparation of this elementary book on a great subject, the authors have tried to meet what seems to them to be a real need. To very many thinkers the development theory is the great scientific generalization of the century. Even if it should ever come to appear something less than this, none will dispute the fact that the theory has furnished an incalculable stimulus to the thought of to-day. Yet how few, except special students of the natural or of the physical sciences, really know what is meant by organic evolution! Ask the average graduate of a high school, an academy, or even of one of our minor colleges, to state his conception of the theory. One is ashamed to quote the ready but unmeaning reply, which not seldom would be, "Oh! I know only that Darwin thought we are descended from monkeys." |