4 THE HISTOEY OF CREATION. 



acceptance and recognition in larger circles. Hence the 

 odd contradictions and the strange opinions which may still 

 be heard everywhere about Darwinism. This is the reason 

 which induces me to make Darwin's theory, and those further 

 doctrines which are connected with it, the subject of these 

 pages, which, I hope, will be generally intelligible. I hold 

 it to be the duty of naturalists, not merely to meditate upon 

 improvements and discoveries in the narrow circle to which 

 their speciality confines them, not merely to pore over their 

 one study with love and care, but also to seek to make the 

 important general results of it fruitful to the mass, and to 

 assist in spreading the knowledge of physical science among 

 the people. The highest triumph of the human mind, the 

 true knowledge of the most general laws of nature, ought 

 not to remain the private possession of a privileged class of 

 savans, but ought to become the common property of all 

 mankind. 



The theory which, through Darwin, has been placed at 

 the head of all our knowledge of nature, is usually called the 

 Doctrine of Filiation, or the Theory of Descent. Others term 

 it the Transmutation Theory. Both designations are correct. 

 For this doctrine affirms, that all organisons (viz. all species 

 of animals, all species of plants, which have ever existed or 

 still exist on the earth) are derived from one single, or from 

 a few simple original forons, and that they have developed 

 theonselves from these in the natural course of a gradual 

 change. Although this theory of development had already 

 been brought forward and defended by several great natm-al- 

 ists, and especially by Lamarck and Goethe, in the beginning 

 of our centiu-y, still it was through Darwin, thirteen years 

 ago, that it received its complete demonstration and causal 



