ACCORDING TO DARWI BY WOODS HUTCHINSON, A. M., M. D. CHICAGO THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY LONDON AGENTS KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜEBNER & CO. 1898 COPYRIGHT, 1898 BY THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO. CHICAGO The Lakeside Press R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY CHICAGO PREFACE. THE purpose of a preface is twofold. First, to disarm, in advance, the criticism of the readernot to mention the reviewer. Second, to explain what the author would have done-if he could. To the former end I wish simply to say that it is in no sense the purpose of this little volume to furnish a system of ethical or religious thought, or the germ of a new religion, as perhaps its title might lead some to infer, least of all to enunciate truths which are original with, or peculiar to its author. It is merely an attempt to get a bird's-eye view of a few of the influences affecting human hope and human happiness from the standpoint of that view of and attitude towards the universe which is best expressed by the term Darwinism. This term is not used of course in the narrow sense of the personal views of Charles Darwin in contrast with those of other evolutionists, be they his predecessors or his successors, but simply as typifying the evolutionary movement and its wonderful consequences by the name of its greatest thinker and ablest champion, who first made the theory of evolution credible or even thinkable. Its effort is to show that this attitude possesses a broad and secure basis for courage and happiness in the present and hope for the future. vii |