EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY 



more than of such characters as dust-laden finger- 

 nails or acquired ideas. 



Turn we now to the factor of organic evolution 

 which is known as natural selection or the survival 

 of the fittest. The history of this idea has already 

 been alluded to, in relation to atoms, societies, and 

 living species. For a further discussion of it the 

 reader may be referred to the historical sketch 

 prefixed to the later editions of the Origin of Spe- 

 cies. But though Darwin was preceded by other 

 thinkers, in biology and other realms, in the enun- 

 ciation of this idea, and though the famous paper 

 read before the Linnaean Society in 1858 was the 

 joint product of Darwin and Mr. Alfred Russel 

 Wallace, yet it is beyond all question the name 

 of Charles Robert Darwin, the greatest biologist 

 of any age, that will ever and rightly be associated 

 with this idea. Others had enunciated it, but he 

 alone demonstrated its truth. We learn from an 

 early letter * that he began to collect facts bearing on 

 the question of the origin of species nearly twenty 

 years before his masterpiece saw the light ; and his 

 great labors did not cease for more than twenty 

 years thereafter. The idea of organic evolution 

 had been hinted at, or definitely supported, by his 

 grandfather, by Lamarck and Goethe and Spencer 

 and Robert Chambers, 2 but it was not until the 



1 Published in More Letters of Charles Darwin (John Murray). 



2 Now known to be the author of the once famous Vestiges of 

 Creation, 



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