Excerpt from The Meaning of Organic Evolution No scientific law has ever been more widely misunderstood as to its content, or more thoroughly and persistently misapprehended as to its significance than has that of Evolution or Organic Descent. The problems of life are throughout largely problems of adjustment; and it is only natural, therefore, for people to suspect, fear or oppose anything strange or not mentally comprehended, inasmuch as their lack of experience and knowledge with reference to it leaves them to grope more or less in uncertainty. Hence, since the minds of most persons in the ordinary walks of life are but meagerly provided with the ideas and materials upon which the theory is based and as a consequence form the conception, if at all, with difficulty and but imperfectly, we can readily understand why Evolution, or what has passed for it, has met with such prejudice and opposition. Misunderstanding on the part of church members, in particular, has been very unfortunate; for the consequent opposition, prolonged and often bitter, has in reality been without rational justification and has resulted in much harm through hampering both intellectual and religious progress. The issues of this conflict, now so far a matter of history, in fact, attest the truth and give specific illustration of the following proposition formulated many years ago by Andrew D. White: "In all modern history interference with science in the supposed interest of religion, no matter how conscientious such interference may have been, has resulted in the direst evils both to religion and science, and invariably; and, on the other hand, all untrammeled scientific investigation, no matter how dangerous to religion some of its stages may have seemed for the time to be, has invariably resulted in the highest good both of religion and of science." The following pages are written in non-technical terms for the general reader, their purpose being briefly to explain certain aspects of Organic Descent about which misunderstanding and misapprehension seem particularly to cling. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.