102 A Century of Science 



whole advance of modern science from the days of 

 Copernicus down to the present day, have con 

 sisted in the substitution of processes which are 

 familiar and the application of those processes, 

 showing how they produce great results. 



When Darwin s &quot; Origin of Species &quot; was first 

 published, when it gave us that wonderful explana 

 tion of the origin of forms of life from allied forms 

 through the operation of natural selection, it must 

 have been like a mental illumination to every per 

 son who comprehended it. But after all it left a 

 great many questions unexplained, as was natural. 

 It accounted for the phenomena of organic develop 

 ment in general with wonderful success, but it must 

 have left a great many minds with the feeling : If 

 man has been produced in this way, if the mere 

 operation of natural selection has produced the 

 human race, wherein is the human race anyway 

 essentially different from lower races? Is not 

 man really dethroned, taken down from that excep 

 tional position in which we have been accustomed 

 to place him, and might it not be possible, in the 

 course of the future, for other beings to come upon 

 the earth as far superior to man as man is superior 

 to the fossilized dragons of Jurassic antiquity ? 



Such questions used to be asked, and when they 

 were asked, although one might have a very strong 



