94 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN. 



This creature, if its wliole structure had been examined by a naturalist, 

 would have been classed among the Quadrumana, as surely as would the 

 common and still more ancient progenitor of the Old and New World 

 monkeys."— Charles Darwin (1871). 



In the short time that has passed since the appearance of 

 Charles Darwin's book " On the Origin of Species in the 

 Animal and Vegetable Kingdom/' the History of Evolution 

 has advanced so greatly that it is scarcely possible to point 

 to an equally great advance throughout the whole record 

 of the Natural Sciences. The literature of Darwinism is 

 increasing day by day, not only in connection with Zoology 

 and Botany — which are the special sciences most affected 

 and reformed by the Darwinian Theory — but far beyond. 

 It is applied in much wider circles with a zeal and interest 

 which no other scientific theory has ever aroused. There 

 are two distinct circumstances which principally exj^lain 

 this extraordinary success. In the first place, all the 

 natural sciences, and especially Biology, made unusually 

 rapid progress during the preceding half century, and from 

 actual experience many new data for the theory of natural 

 evolution were amassed. When compared with the failure 

 of Lamarck, and the earlier naturalists to obtain recognition 

 for their first attempts to explain the origin of organ- 

 isms and of man, the success of the second attempt, made 

 by Darwin, who had afc his command such vast accumu- 

 lations of well-attested facts, was all the more thorou^fh. 

 In availing himself of recent progress, the latter was able 

 to employ quite other scientific evidence than Lamarck and 

 Geofiroy, Goethe and Treviranus, could command. But, in 

 the second place, we must give due weight to the fact that 

 Darwin has the especial merit of having approached the 



