The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1894-12-05
JORDAN ON EVOLUTION.

The address which President David Starr
Jordan delivered on Monday to the Baptist
Ministerial Association was interesting
and instructive. II requires the interven-
tion of bold, sound, clear-headed thinkers
to keep education in line with the ad-
vance of the knowledge of truth. Science
long ago admi ted that living organisms
were modified by varying conditions, by
geographical distribution and by geologi-
cal succession /; but even to-day men who
are in position to inf uence public opinion
are sometimes ready to dispute not only
its details but the general principle.
Professor Jordan's observation and study
have taught him to conclude that the
higher forms of life have gradually arisen
out of the lower, AMI that the history of
the world is not disjointed aggregation of
disconnected facts. but al orderly success
sion OF events occurring in obedience to
hXed laws. AS a science evolution is in
It's infancy. as may be inferred from the
fact that Professor Jordan felt tt neces-
sary to explain to his audience that in
stances OF transmutation of species have
taken place, and that there has been no
material change in man since he first APP
peared on the planet BE traced the evo-
luton of existing forms of life from pre-
historic ancestors by describing the de-
velopment OF the horse, of the carnivora
from the fossils of the tertiary deposits,
of the notifications observed in the forms
OF reptilia; and when he came TO fact
which was not susceptible of easy eXplana-
ton he did not deny il, but honestly con-
tessed his embarrassment. and explained
that science and philosophy had not
reached finality, but had yet much to
learn.
Professor Jordan and his colabOrers are
laying foundation for study of pre-
historic man-to which 1t is difficult to set
limits. We say. judging from the most
ancient fossils which have been found,
that man is the same now as he was at the
beginning of the world. He has not varied
in stature. or weight. or structure, or lin BIS,
or organs. No scientific evidence of his
affinity with the smian races has ever been
brought to light. Yet he must have been
subject to the law of evolution which pre-
vailed throughout created nature. We are
driven to the hypothesis thatln him evolu-
ton was mental and spiritual, and not
corporal. The primeval man of Western
Europe lived in a cave side by side with
the cave bear, and disputed his scanty
meal with that savage beast; but while he
was gnawing the bones 10 get at the mar
row, and was unconscious Of the adj
vantages of family life, his fellows in
other meridians were building pyramids
and eight-storied temples. surmounted by
golden statues forty feet high. The people
of The bes and Babylon must at one time
have been troglodytes like the cave-dwelers
of France: in them evolution had opera ted
TO raise them to the civilized and luxurious
level. just as the Quaternary horse, with
three toes and the size of a sheep, was the
progenitor of The noble beasts which we
saw at the Horse Show, so the men who
lived in dugouts on the Nile and the
Euphrates gradually begot races which
reached the highest level in science and
art, and demon strated in their develop
ment the uniform working of the law OF
evolution. M study is richer than the
study of that development.