DARWIN. 229 



connect him with this history, and can be brought 

 into a stronger light than has been done hitherto. 

 First, how much did Darwin owe to the evolution- 

 ists who went before him ? Second, what was the 

 course of his own changing opinion upon the 

 factors of Evolution? 



As to the first, he owed far more to the past than 

 is generally believed, or than he himself was con- 

 scious of, especially to the full and true conception 

 of the Evolution idea, which had already been 

 reached, to the nature of its evidences, and, to some 

 extent, to the line of its factors. Although antici- 

 pated by others, Darwin conceived, and worked 

 out, the theory of Natural Selection. What he 

 owed to no one came from his genius and his won- 

 derful application of the inductive method of search 

 after natural laws. Like Lamarck alone, among all 

 his predecessors, Darwin was early fired with the 

 truth of the idea and was equally ready to suffer 

 social and scientific ostracism in its pursuit. 



Second, I will endeavour to trace the influences 

 which moulded Darwin's earlier and later opinions ; 

 how, starting with some leaning towards the theo- 

 ries of modification of Buffon and Lamarck, he 

 reached an almost exclusive belief in his own theory, 

 and then gradually inclined to adopt Buffon's, 

 and then Lamarck's theories as well, until in his 

 maturest writings he embraced a threefold causa- 

 tion in the origin of species. Namely, as first and 

 most important, the Darwin-Wallace factor of 



