The Lesson of Evolution

Abstract

OF the two essays composing this little book, the first formed the inaugural address to the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science at the Hobart meeting in January, 1902. Part of the second essay formed the presidential address to the Geological Section of the same Association at the Sydney meeting in 1898, while the second part of this essay, dealing with “Later Life on the Earth,” has been written for the present work. The second essay may be at once dismissed with the remark that it is a tolerably well-digested statement of the facts of biological evolution as revealed by palæontological succession. The first essay, which embodies the “lesson “which the author desires to impress upon a wider public than the audience assembled to hear the address at Hobart, is the one which claims the most critical attention, because the author most unhesitatingly and boldly declares that he has discovered the aim and object of evolution—that the purpose for which this process was designed and set going on this earth is “the development of man's moral nature.”

The Lesson of Evolution.

By Frederick Wollaston Hutton, Curator of the Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand. Pp. 100. (London: Duckworth and Co., 1902.) Price 2s.