456 CHARLES DAEWIN. 



contributed to its force. Most of them in their practical studies had 

 worked up to, or were nearly approaching, the question of the rela- 

 tion of the past inhabitants of the earth to the present, and of the 

 present to one another, in such wise as to suggest inevitably that, 

 somehow or other, descent with modification was eventually to be the 

 explanation. This was the natural outcome of the line of thought of 

 which Lyell early became the cautious and fair-minded expositor, and 

 with which he reconstructed theoretical geology. If Lyell had known 

 as much at first hand of botany or zoology as he knew of geology, it 

 is probable that his celebrated chapter on the permanence of species in 

 the " Principles " would have been reconsidered before the work had 

 passed to the ninth edition in 1853. He was convinced that species 

 went out of existence one by one, through natural causes, and that 

 they came in one by one, bearing the impress of their immediate 

 predecessors ; but he saw no way to connect the two through natural 

 operations. Nor, in fact, had any of the evolutionists been able 

 to assign real causes capable of leading on such variations as are of 

 well-known occurrence to wider and specific or generic differences. 

 Just here came Darwin. When upon the spot he had perceived that 

 the animals of the Galapagos must be modified forms derived from 

 the adjacent continent, and he soon after worked out the doctrine of 

 natural selection. This supplied what was wanting for the condensation 

 of opinions and beliefs, and the collocation of rapidly accumulating facts, 

 into a consistent and workable scientific theory, under a principle 

 which unquestionably could directly explain much, and might indirectly 

 explain more. 



It is not merely that Darwin originated and applied a new princijile. 

 Not to speak of Wallace, his contemporary, who came to it hiter, his 

 countryman. Dr. Wells, as Mr. Darwin points out, " distinctly recog- 

 nizes the principle of natural selection, and this is the first recognition 

 which has been indicated ; but he applied it only to the races of men, 

 and to certain characters alone." Darwin, like the rest of the world, 

 was unaware of this anticipation until he was preparing the fourth 

 edition of his " Origin of Species," in 186G, when he promptly called 

 attention to it, j^erhaps magnifying its importance. However this be, 

 Darwin appears to have been first and alone in apprehending and 

 working out the results which necessarily come from the interaction 

 of the surrounding agencies and conditions under which plants and 

 animals exist, including, of course, their action upon each other. Per- 

 sonifying the ensemble of these and the consequences, — namely, the 

 survival only of the fittest in the struggle for life, — under the term 



