432 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 
It may without exaggeration be said that no scientific man, 
certainly no naturalist, ever made an impression at once so 
deep, so wide, and so immediate. The name of Linnzus 
might suggest comparison; but readers and pupils of Linnzus 
over acentury ago were to those of Darwin as tens are to 
thousands, and the scientific as well as the popular interest of 
the subjects considered were somewhat in the same ratio. 
Humboldt, who, like Darwin, began with research in travel, 
and to whom the longest of lives, vigorous health, and the 
best opportunities were allotted, essayed similar themes in a 
more ambitious spirit, enjoyed equal or greater renown, but 
made no deep impression upon the thought of his own day or 
of ours. As one criterion of celebrity, it may be noted that 
no other author we know of ever gave rise in his own active 
lifetime to a special department of bibliography. Dante-liter- 
ature and Shakespeare-literature are the growth of centuries; 
but Darwinismus had filled shelves and alcoves and teeming 
catalogues while the unremitting author was still supplying 
new and ever novel subjects for comment. The technical 
term which he chose for a designation of his theory, and sey- 
eral of the phrases originated in explanation of it only twenty- 
five years ago, have already been engrafted into his mother 
tongue, and even into other languages, and are turned to use 
in common as well as in philosophical discourse, without sense 
of strangeness. 
Wonderful indeed is the difference between the reception 
accorded to Darwin and that met with by his predecessor, 
Lamarck. Buta good deal has happened since Lamarck’s 
day ; wide fields of evidence were open to Darwin which were 
wholly unknown to his forerunner; and the time had come 
when the subject of the origin and connection of living forms 
could be taken up as a research rather than as a speculation. 
Philosophizers on evolution have not been rare; but Darwin 
was not one of them. He was a scientific investigator, — a 
philosopher, if you please, but one of the type of Galileo. 
Indeed very much what Galileo was to physical science in his 
time, Darwin is to biological science in ours. This without 
reference to the fact that the writings of both conflicted with 
