NATURAL SELECTION 65 



become a subject of general interest. To Darwin 

 undoubtedly belongs the honour of making it a 

 subject of general interest, and also of securing its 

 final establishment. But to Darwin's contemporary 

 scientists belongs the discredit of having accepted 

 his explanation of the manner in which Nature 

 attains her evolutionary ends, while as yet his ex- 

 planation was a mere piling up of assumption upon 

 assumption. In accepting it as it was given forth, 

 without examining, or attempting to verify, his funda- 

 mental assumptions, Darwin's contemporaries proved 

 disloyal to science, in that they abandoned and 

 betrayed its first principles, foremost among which is 

 the examination and verification of every provisional 

 hypothesis. 



For the benefit of my readers who do not profess 

 to have studied the Origin of Species closely, I shall 

 now give a short account of the action, as Darwin 

 has conceived it, of his evolutionary factor, the 

 individual difference or variation. 



In the first place, I shall give its assumed action 

 in each generation, and, in the second place, its 

 assumed evolutionary action through measureless 

 tracts of time. In the preceding chapter I have 

 indicated in a general way what the former of these 

 is. However, I trust a recapitulation of it here 

 will not prove unacceptable. In the great and 

 complex battle of life, in the dire struggle for 

 existence, necessitated by the reproduction of each 

 species being much too great to find maintenance 

 5 



