2 EAELY DAYS 



medicine sprang the organised knowledge both of botany and 

 of animal life : first the herbal and the history book of animals, 

 full of strange lore ; then the gradual searching out of living 

 framework and vital processes, which finally took rank and 

 order as the anatomy and physiology of animals and plants. 

 That these researches awakened doubts of the conventional 

 creeds as applied to nature is evidenced by the familiar sneer at 

 the dangerous folk who recognised the constancy of natural law 

 in the workings of the human frame — uU tres medici, ihi duo 

 athei. Chemistry began to emerge experimentally from the 

 mists of alchemy some half-century before Hooker's birth. 

 Geology took operative shape yet later: with Lyell's 'Principles * 

 in 1839 the first step was built of the stairway that actually led 

 to the theory oF evolution. The succession 61 ^ifTering forms 

 of similar creatures in a fossil state provoked challenge of the 

 doctrine of immutabiUty of species ; indeed, as has been well 

 said, if the theory of evolution had not existed. Geology 

 would have had to invent it. By the fifties, also, botany, 

 in its search for a natural system of classification, was rip6 

 for the acceptance of an evolutionary explanatiohT " 



If the interest awakened by scientific men is proportioned 

 to the degree in which their researches and discoveries come 

 home to * men's business and bosoms,' giving new colour or 

 shape to the eternal questions of the making of the heavens 

 and the earth, the nature of matter, the play of subtle forces, 

 the laws of life and disease, man's place in the universe, his 

 origin and his destiny, then in every province of physics and 

 astronomy, in medicine and its fellow sciences, the nineteenth 

 century saw great and memorable figures stand out : but most 

 memorable the central group, who, touching most nearly upon 

 life and its place in the universe, awoke the loudest opposition 

 and achieved the greatest triumph. 



Charles Lyell pointed the way to Darwin : after the appear- 

 ance of the ' Origin of Species,' Thomas Henry Huxley was 

 chief champion in the support and spread of evolution on the 

 one hand, and, on the other, of freedom of scientific thought 

 and speech. It was Hooker's privilege to be Darwin's sole 

 confidant for near fifteen years, his generous friend, his unstint- 



