Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/410

404 the results. With these results it appears to me that Darwinism is clearly and definitely established for man.

It is not so many years ago since a distinguished statesman, speaking within the walls of this university, asserted that, "No man has ever seen natural selection at work." At that time all the criticism

possible seemed, "Every man who has lived through a hard winter, every man who has examined a mortality table, every man who has studied the history of nations, has probably seen natural selection at work." And thirteen years later I should add: The time has now come for statesmen to inquire whether natural selection is doing its work efficiently; that it applies to man no longer admits of question. Can it possibly be that agencies under the control of the legislator are suspending that Platonic purification of the state which in olden time natural selection worked almost automatically?