THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. 583 



difficulties had been removed by himself or were likely to be re- 

 moved within a single generation by the collective work of the 

 whole scientific world. The present generation has witnessed a 

 tendency toward restricting the probable limits of the efficacy of 

 natural selection, followed by an equally marked tendency toward 

 enlarging them a tendency likely to be furthered by Mr. Wal- 

 lace's recent book, pointing out the great extent of variation that 

 normally goes on within the limits of one and the same species. 

 Such minor fluctuations in scientific theory occur in all depart- 

 ments of inquiry, but no one doubts the essential soundness of the 

 Darwinian theory, and as for the doctrine of special creations 

 which it superseded, we shall probably go back to it when we go 

 back to stone arrow-heads and the primitive Aryan ox-cart, and 

 not before. , 



It has more than once been observed that, when a new discov- 

 ery in science is announced to the world, people at first scout it as 

 ridiculous or frown upon it as impious, but afterward, when it is 

 no longer possible to gainsay it, they suddenly find that everybody 

 knew all about it long ago. This habit is probably due to an ex- 

 aggerated regard for consistency and a failure to realize that the 

 thoughts of men are, and ought to be, widened with the progress 

 of the suns. About the origin and history of the doctrine of evo- 

 lution there is in the popular mind a great confusion of ideas ; and 

 this, as we now begin to see, is because the conception of evolution 

 is itself something which has grown up gradually. It is an end 

 toward which the whole momentum of scientific thought since 

 Newton's day has been tending, yet which has been clearly and 

 fully recognized only of late years. As regards Mr. Darwin's con- 

 tribution to the general result, it admits of precise definition. 

 The doctrine of natural selection, which Mr. Spencer afterward 

 called " the survival of the fittest," belongs to Mr. Darwin and to 

 Mr. Wallace as much as the differential calculus belongs to New- 

 ton and Leibnitz. The same problem was solved in the same way, 

 first by Mr. Darwin, and then a dozen years later by Mr. Wallace 

 in complete ignorance of what Mr. Darwin had done. " Darwin- 

 ism" is the doctrine which maintains that many different forms 

 of animal and vegetable life have a common ancestry, and which 

 defines and describes natural selection as the chief agent in bring- 

 ing about divergencies. Its distinctive feature that which con- 

 stitutes its value and its grandeur as a scientific doctrine is the 

 discovery and demonstration of the agency of natural selection. 

 No one anticipated Mr. Darwin in that. 



But the doctrine of natural selection is one thing, and the doc- 

 trine of evolution is quite another thing. It covers much more 

 ground, and a good deal of it is ground with which Mr. Darwin 

 had little or nothing to do. Vague notions of evolution were in 



