PART IV. 



MODERN EVOLUTION, 

 i. Darwin and Wallace. 



We have to deal with Man as a product of Evolution ; with Society 

 as a product of Evolution ; and with Moral Phenomena as prod- 

 ucts of Evolution. HERBERT SPENCER, Principles of Ethics, 

 193. 



CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN (the second name was 

 rarely used by him) was born at Shrewsbury on the 

 1 2th of February, 1809. He came of a long line of 

 Lincolnshire yeomen, whose forbears spelt the name 

 variously, as Darwen, Derwent, and Darwynne, per- 

 haps deriving it from the river of kindred name. 

 His father was a kindly, prosperous doctor, of suf- 

 ficient scientific reputation to secure his election into 

 the Royal Society, although that coveted honour 

 was then more easily obtained than now. Of the 

 more famous grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, the re- 

 minder suffices that both his prose and poetry were 

 vehicles of suggestive speculations on the develop- 

 ment of life-forms. Dealing with bald facts and dates 

 for clearance of what follows, it may be added that 

 Charles Darwin was educated at the Grammar 

 School of his native town; that he passed thence to 

 Edinburgh and Cambridge Universities; was occu- 

 pied as volunteer naturalist on board the Beagle from 

 126 



