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Herbert Spencer 93 



These and many other instances which might be 

 brought together from the pubHshed writings of the 

 half-century before the pubHcation of the Origin^ show 

 conclusively that the idea of evolution was far from 

 new, and that all through the first part of this century 

 dissatisfaction with the doctrine of the fixity of species 

 and of their miraculous creation was growing. The 

 great contribution of Darwin was this: First, b}^ his 

 theory of natural selection, he brought together the 

 known facts of variation, of struggle for existence, and 

 of adaptation to varying conditions, in such a way that 

 they provided men with a rational and known cause, a 

 cause the operation of which could be seen, for the 

 origin of species by means of preservation of favoured 

 races. Next, as to the origin of species, he brought to- (^ 

 gether not only proofs of the actual operation of natural 

 selection, Vjut a body of evidence in favour of the fact of 

 evolution that was, beyond all comparison, more strik- 

 ing than had been adduced by any earlier philosophical 

 or biological writer. He convinced naturalists that 

 evolution was by far the most probable way in which 

 the living world had come to be what it is, and he made 

 them turn to examination of the animal and vegetable 

 kingdoms with a lively hope that the past history of 

 the living world was not an insoluble problem. Dar- 

 win's doctrine brought a new life into biological study, 

 and the result of the incomparably greater bulk of in- 

 vestigation that followed the year 1859 was a continual 

 increase of evidence in favour of the probability of evo- 

 lution, until now the whole scientific world, and the 

 majority of those who are unscientific, are content to 

 accept evolution as the only reasonable explanation of 

 the living world. It is well to remember that while 

 Darwin, by bringing forward the theory of struggle for 



