ON THE GENETIC VIEW OF NATURE. 



341 



generalisations which he attempts. Absolute mathe- 

 matical certainty is almost unknown in such cases : they 

 can only be made out with more or less clearness and 

 probability. 



It seems to me that the new phase into which scientific 

 thought has entered, mainly through the influence of 

 Darwin, has not been sufficiently appreciated by those of 

 his critics who have compared his methods with those of 

 earlier philosophers and naturalists. Darwin has been 

 called by some the Newton of the natural sciences, 1 and 

 again by others his method has been unfavourably con- 

 trasted with that of Newton and Cuvier. 2 Some of these 



39. 



Darwin and 

 Newton 

 compared. 



1 It is in many instances only 

 a fa$on de parler. Maxwell simi- 

 larly called Ampere the Newton of 

 Electrodynamics ; and Young has 

 been called the Newton of Optics. 

 Mr Wallace says (' Darwinism,' p. 

 9) : " We claim for Darwin that he 

 is the Newton of natural history, 

 and that, just so surely as that the 

 discovery and demonstration by 

 Newton of the law of gravitation 

 established order in place of chaos, 

 and laid a sure foundation for all 

 future study of the starry heavens, 

 so surely has Darwin, by his dis- 

 covery of the law of natural selec- 

 tion and his demonstration of the 

 great principle of the preservation 

 of useful variations in the struggle 

 for life, not only thrown a flood of 

 light on the process of development 

 of the whole organic world, but also 

 established a firm foundation for all 

 future study of nature." 



2 The most important publica- 

 tion of this kind is the late Pro- 

 fessor Albert Wigand's work, in 

 three volumes, ' Der Darwinismus 

 und die Naturforschuug Newton's 

 und Cuvier's' (Braunschweig, 1874- 

 1877). The author significantly 

 classes Humboldt also among those 



who belong to that period and 

 school of research which has un- 

 fortunately, in his opinion been 

 superseded by the modern genetic 

 treatment (see vol. iii. p. 14). It is 

 not likely that a perusal of these 

 volumes will, in the mind of the 

 reader, change the current of 

 thought which is now, even more 

 than twenty-five years ago, running 

 in genetic lines, nor will it do any- 

 thing towards diminishing the sense 

 of importance which attaches to 

 this modern movement. Never- 

 theless, the book is valuable as 

 giving a very complete rsum6 of 

 what was said " pro and con " Dar- 

 winism during the first fifteen years 

 of its existence. It is interesting 

 to see what a small part French 

 scientific opinion played during that 

 period as to the theories of descent 

 and mutability of species, which had 

 both their origin and their first great 

 exponents in France. The book 

 does not appear to have had much 

 influence in its time, but more 

 recently the criticisms of Wigand, 

 von Baer, and other writers seem 

 to receive greater attention since 

 the central biological problems have 

 been pushed into the foreground. Of 



