168 LIFE OF 



the study of plants, naturally looked on the botanist 

 somewhat in the light of a laborious trifler. . . . Darwin 

 altered all this. He made the dry bones live ; he in- 

 vested plants and animals with a history, a biography, a 

 genealogy, which at once conferred an interest and a 

 dignity on them. Before, they were as the stuffed skin 

 of a beast in the glass case of a museum ; now they are 

 living beings, each in their degree affected by the same 

 circumstances that affect ourselves, and swayed, mutatis 

 mutandis, by like feelings and like passions. If he had 

 done nothing more than this we might still have claimed 

 Darwin as a horticulturist ; but as we shall see, he has 

 more direct claims on our gratitude. The apparently 

 trifling variations, the variations which it was once the 

 fashion for botanists to overlook, have become, as it 

 were, the keystone of a great theory." 



A valuable summary of Darwin's influence on general 

 philosophic thought has been given by Mr. James Sully, 

 in his article, "Evolution in Philosophy," in "The En- 

 cyclopaedia Britannica," Qth ed., vol. viii. He, like many 

 other thinkers, considers that Darwin has done much to 

 banish old ideas as to the evidence of purpose in nature. 

 Mr. Sully's views are not entirely shared, however, by 

 Professor Winchell, an able American evolutionist ("En- 

 cyclopaedia Americana," vol. ii.) who considers that the 

 question of teleology, or of purpose in nature, is not really 

 touched by the special principle of natural selection, nor 

 by the general doctrine of evolution. The mechanical 

 theorist may, consistently with these doctrines, maintain 

 that every event takes place without a purpose ; while the 

 Ideologist, or believer in purpose, may no less con- 



