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Columbia University Lectures
1906-1907
NEW YORK:
LEMCKE & BUECHNER
30-32 WEST 27TH STREET
New York
1916
All rights reserved
By THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1911.
Reprinted December, 1912; September, 1916.
Norwood Press
J.S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
The present volume consists of a series of eight addresses delivered asthe Hewitt Lectures of Columbia University at Cooper Union in New YorkCity during the months of February and March, 1907. The purpose of theselectures was to describe in concise outline the Doctrine of Evolution, itsbasis in the facts of natural history, and its wide and universal scope.They fall naturally into two groups. Those of the first part deal withmatters of definition, with the essential characteristics of livingthings, and, at greater length, with the evidences of organic evolution.The lectures of the second group take up the various aspects of humanevolution as a special instance of the general organic process. In thislatter part of the series, the subject of physical evolution is firstconsidered, and this is followed by an analysis of human mental evolution;the chapter on social evolution extends the fundamental principles to afield which is not usually considered by biologists, and its purpose is todemonstrate the efficiency of the genetic method in this department as inall others; finally, the principles are extended to what is called "thehigher human life," the realm, namely, of ethical, religious, andtheological ideas and ideals.
Naturally, so broad a survey of knowledge could not include any extensivearray of specific details in any one of its divisions; it was possibleonly to set forth some of the more striking and significant facts whichwould demonstrate the nature and meaning of that department from whichthey were selected. The illustrations were usually made concrete throughthe use o