Darwin's Voyage 



29 



spread. He realised on his voyage that species had 

 come into existence by descent with modification, and 

 before long he was to publish to the world in the Origin 

 of Species a vast and convincing bulk of evidence as to 

 the actual fact of a common descent for all the different 

 existing organisms, and, in his theory of natural selec- 

 tion, a reasonable explanation of how the fact of evolu- 

 tion had come about. Darwin's greatest ally in bringing 

 the new idea before the world was Huxlej^, and Huxley 

 was teaching himself the absolute unity of the living 

 world. The two men were dissimilar in tastes and 

 temperament, and they were at work on quite different 

 sides of nature. When the time came, Huxley, with 

 his commanding knowledge of the structure of animals, 

 was ready to support Darwin and to illustrate and 

 amplify his arguments by a thousand anatomical proofs. 

 It is a curious and dramatic coincidence to realise that 

 both men learned their very different lessons under 

 very similar circumstances in the tropical seas of the 

 Southern Hemisphere. 



