Miscellaneous Papers. 155 



understanding of Nature and her revelations of the wonderful 

 methods of the Creator. 



The year 1909 was remarkable as being the centennial anniver- 

 sary of 80 many great men, not the least of whom was Charles 

 Darwin. Evolution was not a new idea with him, for it had been 

 first suggested by Aristotle and the Greeks. But it had been 

 smothered by the scolastics of the dark ages and only began to blaze 

 forth again in feeble sparks during the first part of the nineteenth 

 century. Several writers had touched upon it, but none studied 

 and systematically accumulated facts bearing upon it until Darwin 

 began his tireless investigations. While he owed much to previous 

 writers for the inception of the idea, what he owed to no one was 

 the application of the inductive method of research, and he stands 

 out as the first who worked upon true Baconian principles. He 

 sought a hundred facts and deductions where his predecessors had 

 been satisfied with but one. His was the matchless genius that 

 crystallized all that had gone before, and added thereto his own 

 stupendous observations, and deduced the great principles for which 

 the world was waiting. 



The great storehouse of facts was fairly bursting for want of 

 generalization. The accumulated data of the centuries were all 

 ready to blaze forth into the flame of a great philosophy, and the 

 spark that lit the conflagration was Darwin's great book upon "The 

 Origin of Species." It has been said that the true greatness of a 

 writer consists in the greatness of his theme, and this is especially 

 true of Darwin. His was the genius to give expression to a great 

 thought that was in the air and for which the world was waiting. 

 As the promulgator of the theme of evolution he was the right 

 man in the right place at the right time. He produced immortal 

 work, and the world rightly estimates him as one of the intellec- 

 tual giants of the English race. ♦ 



It is now generally conceded that Darwin's "Origin of Species' 

 was the greatest book of the nineteenth century, and this preemi- 

 nence is accorded to it, not on account of its literary merit — although 

 it is a model of dignity and simplicity and may well be reckoned as 

 an English classic — but because of its far-reaching influence; be- 

 cause the principle of evolution that it established on a firm basis 

 has permeated and revolutionized every domain of human thought. 

 It was a great book because it contained the complete elaboration of 

 a great idea for which the world was waiting, and it was immedi- 

 ately recognized as being great. As you know, Alfred Russel 

 Wallace had the idea of natural selection come to him in the wilds 



