The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Arena, by Various

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Title: The Arena
Volume 18, No. 93, August, 1897

Author: Various

Editor: John Clark Ridpath

Release Date: September 5, 2010 [EBook #33646]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE ARENA.

VOL. XVIII.

AUGUST, 1897.

NO. 93.

[Illustration: David Starr Jordan (with signature)]

EVOLUTION: WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT.[1]

BY DR. DAVID STARR JORDAN,

_President of Leland Stanford Junior University_.

[1] Address before the Starr King Fraternity of Oakland, Cal.

I. WHAT EVOLUTION IS.

This the age of evolution. The word is used by many men in many senses,
and still oftener perhaps in no sense at all. By some it is spoken with
a haunting dread as though it were another name for the downfall of
religion and of social stability. Still others speak it glibly and
joyously as though progress and freedom were secured by the mere use of
the name. "The word evolution (_Entwickelung_)," says a German writer,
"fills the vocal chords more perfectly than any other word." It explains
everything, and "puts the key to the universe into one's vest pocket."

So various has been the use of the word, so rarely is this use
associated with any definite idea, that one hesitates to call himself an
evolutionist. "Evolution" and "evolutionist" are almost ready to be cast
into that "limbo of spoiled phraseology" which Matthew Arnold has found
necessary for so many words in which other generations have delighted,
and which they have soiled or spoiled by careless usage.

But as the word evolution is not yet put away, as it is the bugbear of