254 LIFE OF DARWIN 



graphic chapter on the reception of the book, and in 

 his vigorous and witty style recalls the furious and 

 fatuous objections that were urged against it. A much 

 longer chapter will be required to describe the change 

 which the advent of the Origin of Species has wrought 

 in every department of science, and not of science only, 

 but of philosophy. The principle of evolution, so 

 early broached and so long discredited, has now at 

 last been proclaimed and accepted as the guiding idea 

 in the investigation of Nature. 



One of the most marvellous aspects of Darwin's 

 work was the way in which he seemed always to throw 

 a new light upon every department of inquiry into 

 which the course of his researches led him to look. 

 The specialists who, in their own narrow domains, had 

 been toiling for years, patiently gathering facts and 

 timidly drawing inferences from them, were astonished 

 to find that one who, to their eyes, was a kind of 

 outsider, could point out to them the plain meaning 

 of things which, though entirely familiar to them, 

 they had never adequately understood. The central 

 idea of the Origin of Species is an example of this in 

 the biological sciences. The chapter on the imper- 

 fection of the geological record is another in the 

 domain of geology. 



After the publication of the Origin, Darwin gave 

 to the world during a succession of years a series of 

 volumes, in which some of his observations and con- 

 clusions were worked out in fuller detail. His books 

 on the fertilisation of orchids, on the movements and 

 habits of climbing plants, on the variation of animals 

 and plants under domestication, on the effects of cross 



