ction between those beasts and living animals.
They say, for instance, that as far back as we have records, we
find the horse practically the same, organically speaking, as he
is to-day. They cast doubt, that is, on the theory that the horse
is descended from the pterodactyl.

It is an interesting point, though there appears to be no
_essential_ difference between this new school and the
thoroughgoing evolutionists; for both admit the principle of the
survival of the fittest. To me the new school's conception seems
to be grotesque. According to them, the world was originally full
of an enormous number of animals, organisms and what not, of
which some have up to date survived, and whose numbers will
decrease until only a few certain types, or perhaps one certain
type, will be left subsisting. That is a view that I cannot
accept. But, of course, Nature has many checks on the
propagation and the multiplication of species. Natural conditions
do not permit of the existence of too many species or
sub-species. But it is clear that there are types, call them
genera, species, or what you will, that have, by virtue of some
inherent fitness and flexibility of adaptation, survived and
mastered other types.

The theory or principle of Natural Selection can also be applied
to nations. As far back as we have any record, man was much the
same sort of being as he is to-day. The genus, in fact, has not
changed. It is now established that in the long distant past
there was one great Aryan race in Central Asia, which has split
up since then into the peoples and nations of modern Europe,
India, Arabia, and so forth. Biologically speaking, these peoples
have all some traits in common, but environment has wrought great
changes and has created species. Between these species there are
great differences, so great indeed that various of them are
to-day engaged in a good old intertribal war.

But has the genus Man always borne the same sort of
characteristics as those that distinguish him to-day? Or, on the
other hand, is he descended from a kangaroo-rat through the long
lineage of the pithecanthropus, the ape-man, the man-ape, and so
forth? And why stop at the kangaroo-rat--the first mammal to
bring forth its young alive? Why not continue his lineage right