Page:Carroll Lane Fenton - A History of Evolution (1922).djvu/28

 Rh other." He goes on to say that there is an unbroken chain extending from man to the lowest animals, from animals to plants, and from plants to the inorganic matter of which the earth is composed. And yet the man who, in 1790, could give so clear an outline of the basic facts of evolution, was unable to believe that the sequence which he perceived would ever be understood! For in another passage he says:

"It is quite certain that we cannot become sufficiently acquainted with organized creatures and their hidden potentialities by aid of purely mechanical natural principles, much less can we explain them; and this is so certain, that we may boldly assert that it is absurd for man even to conceive such an idea, or to hope that a Newton may one day arise to make even the production of a blade of grass comprehensible, according to natural laws ordained by no intention; such an insight we must absolutely deny to man ."

Perhaps the production of a blade of grass is not yet thoroughly comprehensible to us, but certainly the essential steps leading to that production are now well known. Even at the time Kant wrote there lived a man who did much to render the explanation possible, and another who, though disbelieving in evolution of any sort, perfected the means by which evolutionists were to arrange and label the members of the animal and plant king-