ession of opinions; toleration of acts
and practices is another allied subject, on which I can, in a paper
like this, but barely hope to indicate what seems to me to be the
truth, and I should add that I deal only with the discussion of
impersonal doctrines: the law of libel, which deals with accusations
of living persons, is a topic requiring consideration by itself.[9]

Sometimes the definition is rather an unfolding and displaying of the
implications (from the Latin, _implicare_, to fold in) of the term.
Huxley, near the beginning of his three "Lectures on Evolution," made
sure by the following definition that his hearers should have a precise
idea of what he meant by the term "evolution":

The third hypothesis, or the hypothesis of evolution, supposes
that, at any comparatively late period of past time, our imaginary
spectator would meet with a state of things very similar to that
which now obtains; but that the likeness of the past to the present
would gradually become less and less, in proportion to the remoteness
of his period of observation from the present day; that
the existing distribution of mountains and plains, of rivers and
seas, would show itself to be the product of a slow process of
natural change operating upon more and more widely different
antecedent conditions of the mineral framework of the earth;
until, at length, in place of that framework, he would behold only
a vast nebulous mass, representing the constituents of the sun and
of the planetary bodies. Preceding the forms of life which now
exist our observer would see animals and plants not identical with
them, but like them; increasing their differences with their antiquity
and, at the same time, becoming simpler and simpler; until,
finally, the world of life would present nothing but that undifferentiated
protoplasmic matter, which, so far as our present knowledge
goes, is the common foundation of all vital activity.

The hypothesis of evolution supposes that in all this vast progression
there would be no breach of continuity, no point at which
we could say, "This is a natural process," and "This is not a
natural process," but that the whole might be compared to that
wonderful process of development which may be seen going on
every day under our eyes, in virtue of which there arises, out of
the semifluid, comparatively homogeneous substance which we
call an egg, the complicated organization of one of the higher
animals.