Changing species and the existence of things
It means that there is no such thing as a thing.
The distinction between biological descent and a metaphysics of universal flux is essential to the argument: Chesterton explicitly accepts the former as compatible with creation. Darwin's own discussion also helps distinguish unstable species boundaries from the disappearance of objects. In the first edition of On the Origin of Species (1859), chapter II, pp. 51–52, Darwin says that naturalists cannot draw a clear boundary between species, subspecies, varieties and individual differences. He consequently treats the rank of species as a convenient designation for closely resembling individuals. Yet those individuals and their resemblances remain the objects of his explanation. His challenge concerns the permanence and demarcation of biological kinds; it does not assert that nothing exists or can be distinguished. Darwin, Origin, first-edition transcription.
Thus Chesterton's objection needs an additional philosophical premise: that change abolishes all identity and distinction. That premise does not follow from Darwin's discussion. This comparison identifies the limit of the criticism, without establishing whom Chesterton intended by his unnamed ‘philosophic evolutionist’.
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