DARWIN 105 



that made him " Darwin," the mighty intellectual 

 force in the nineteenth century. 



Darwin found an idea in South America. You 

 have to examine it very closely to appreciate it 

 clearly. Let us recapitulate very briefly the 

 hundred years of zoology and botany that had 

 gone before. 



In the eighteenth century Linne drew up, for the 

 first time, a great catalogue of plant and animal 

 species. Each species had a solid Latin name, 

 and was provided with its particular label, by 

 which every representative of the species could 

 be recognised at once. Then the species were 

 bracketed together in larger groups, and a general 

 system was formed. It was an immense scientific 

 advance, and is still generally appreciated as such. 

 But we have to make one reserve. It is not man 

 that separates things ; nature, or rather God who 

 created nature, has already distinguished them. 

 In this respect zoology and botany are of God. 

 The various species of plants and animals are some- 

 thing firmly established by God. Take the polar 

 bear, the hippopotamus, the giraffe, or a particular 

 species of palm, or vine, or rose. There they are, 

 and all that man has to do is to learn their 

 specific characters in order to determine and 

 name them. 



Behind all this we really have the ancient idea 

 of the Mosaic story of creation. God made the 

 animals and plants, species by species, put them in 

 their places, and said to man, "Name them as 

 you think fit, classify them, putting the like to- 



