INTRODUCTION

In the year 1865 Professor Samuel Finley Breese Morse, to whom the world is indebted for the application of the principles of electro-magnetism to telegraphy, gave the sum of ten thousand dollars to Union Theological Seminary to found a lectureship in memory of his father, the Rev. Jedediah Morse, D.D., theologian, geographer, and gazetteer.  The subject of the lectures was to have to do with “The relations of the Bible to any of the sciences.”  The ten chapters of this book correspond to ten lectures, eight of which were delivered as Morse Lectures at Union Theological Seminary during the early spring of 1895.  The first nine chapters appear in form and substance as they were given in the lectures, except that Chapters VI. and VII. were condensed in one lecture.  Chapter X. is new, and I have not hesitated to add a few paragraphs wherever the argument seemed especially to demand further evidence or illustration.

One of my friends, reading the title of these lectures, said:  “Of man’s origin you know nothing, of his future you know less.”  I fear that many share his opinion, although they might not express it so emphatically.

It would seem, therefore, to be in order to show that science is now competent to deal with this question; not that she can give a final and conclusive answer, but that we can reach results which are probably in the main correct.  We may grant very cheerfully that we can attain no demonstration; the most that we can claim for our results will be a high degree of probability.  If our conclusions are very probably correct, we shall do well to act according to them; for all our actions in life are suited to meet the emergencies of a probable but uncertain course of events.

We take for granted the probable truth of the theory of evolution as stated by Mr. Darwin, and that it applies to man as really as to any lower animal.  At the same time it concerns our argument but little whether natural selection is “omnipotent” or of only secondary importance in evolution, as long as it is a real factor, or which theory of heredity or variation is the more probable.

If man has been evolved from simple living substance protoplasm, by a process of evolution, it will some day be possible to write a history of that process.  But have we yet sufficient knowledge to justify such an attempt?

Before the history of any period can be written its events must have been accurately chronicled.  Biological history can be written only when the successive stages of development and the attainments of each stage have been clearly perceived.  In other words, the first prerequisite would seem to be a genealogical[A] tree of the animal kingdom.  The means of tracing this genealogical tree are given in the first chapter, and the results in the second, third, and fourth chapters of this book.

  [Footnote A:  See Phylogenetic Chart, p. 310.]