42 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



inoculation against anthrax, hydrophobia, and perhaps some other 

 diseases, which we owe to Pasteur, must be recorded as splendid 

 victories over the countless legions of our infinitesimal foes. 

 Results like these are the great glory of the scientific workers of 

 the past century. Men may, perhaps, have overrated the progress 

 of nineteenth-century research in opening the secrets of Nature ; 

 but it is difficult to overrate the brilliant service it has rendered 

 in ministering to the comforts and diminishing the sufferings of 

 mankind. 



If we are not able to see far into the causes and origin of life 

 in our own day, it is not probable that we shall deal more success- 

 fully with the problem as it arose many million years ago. Yet 

 certainly the most conspicuous event in the scientific annals of 

 the last half century has been the publication of Mr. Darwin's 

 work on the Origin of Species, which appeared in 1859. In some 

 respects, in the depth of the impression which it made on scien- 

 tific thought, and even on the general opinion of the world, its 

 momentous effect can hardly be overstated. But at this distance- 

 of time it is possible to see that some of its success has been due 

 to adventitious circumstances. It has had the chance of enlisting 

 among its champions some of the most powerful intellects of our 

 time, and perhaps the still happier fortune of appearing at a mo- 

 ment when it furnished an armory of weapons to men, who were 

 not scientific, for use in the bitter but transitory polemics of the- 

 day. But far the largest part of its accidental advantages was to 

 be found in the remarkable character and qualifications of its 

 author. The equity of judgment, the simple-minded love of truth 

 and the patient devotion to the pursuit of it through years of toil 

 and of other conditions the most unpropitious these things en- 

 deared to numbers of men everything that came from Charles 

 Darwin, apart from its scientific merit or literary charm. And 

 whatever final value may be assigned to his doctrine, nothing can 

 ever detract from the luster shed upon it by the wealth of his 

 knowledge and the infinite ingenuity of his resource. The in- 

 trinsic power of his theory is shown at least in this one respect, 

 that in the department of knowledge with which it is concerned 

 it has effected an entire revolution in the methods of research. 

 Before his time the study of living Nature had a tendency to be 

 merely statistical ; since his time it has become predominantly 

 historical. The consideration how any organic body came to be 

 what it is occupies a far larger area in any inquiry now than the 

 mere description of its actual condition ; but this question was 

 not predominant it may almost be said to have been ignored in 

 the botanical and zoological study of sixty years ago. 



Another lasting and unquestioned effect has resulted from 

 Darwin's work. He has, as a matter of fact, disposed of the doc- 



