JVUIV CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 15 



and thonglit of another man of genius fifty years before. The 

 book of Malthus on the Principle of Population, mainly founded 

 on the fact that animals increase in a geometrical ratio, and 

 therefore, unchecked, must encumber the earth, had been gen- 

 erally forgotten, and was only recalled to remembrance now and 

 then with a sneer. But the genius of Darwin recognized in it a 

 deeper meaning, and now the thought of Malthus was joined to 

 the new current. Meditating upon it in connection with his own 

 observations of the luxuriance of Nature, Darwin arrived at his 

 doctrine of natural selection and survival of the fittest. 



As the great dogmatic barrier between the old and new views 

 of the universe was broken down, the flood of new thought pour- 

 ing over the world stimulated and nourished strong growths in 

 every field of research and reasoning ; edition after edition of the 

 book was called for ; it was translated even into Japanese and Hin- 

 dustani ; the stagnation of scientific thought, which Buckle only 

 a few years before had so deeply lamented, gave place to a wide- 

 spread and fruitful activity ; masses of accumulated observa- 

 tions, which had seemed stale and unprofitable, were made alive ; 

 facts formerly without meaning now found their interpretation. 

 Under this new influence a vast army of young men took up every 

 line of scientific investigation in every land. Epoch-making 

 books appeared in all the great nations. Spencer, Wallace, Hux- 

 ley, Galton, Tyndall, Tylor, Lubbock, Bagehot, Lewes, in Eng- 

 land, and a phalanx of strong men in Germany, Italy, France, 

 and America gave forth works which became authoritative in 

 every department of biology. If some of the older men in France 

 held back, overawed perhaps by the authority of Cuvier, the 

 younger and more vigorous pressed on. 



One source of opposition in America deserves to be especially 

 mentioned Louis Agassiz. 



A great investigator, an inspired and inspiring teacher, a noble 

 man, he had received and elaborated a theory of animated crea- 

 tion which he could not readily change. In his heart and mind 

 still prevailed the atmosphere of the little Swiss parsonage in 

 which he was born, and his religious and moral nature, so beauti- 

 ful to all who knew him, was especially repelled by sundry evo- 

 lutionists, who, in their zeal as neophytes, made proclamations 

 having a decidedly irreligious if not immoral bearing. In addi- 

 tion to this was the direction his thinking had received from 

 Cuvier ; both these influences combined to prevent his acceptance 

 of the new view. 



He was the third great man who had thrown his influence as 

 a barrier across the current of evolutionary thought. Linnaeus 

 in the second half of the eighteenth century, Cuvier in the first 

 half and Agassiz in the second half of the nineteenth all made 



