i 4 4 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



and with all that history tells of the persistence of 

 animistic ideas. 



A salutary lesson on the use and misuse of the 

 imagination is thus taught. That which, under 

 wholesome restraint, is the initiative and incentive 

 of enquiry, of enterprise, and of noble ideals ; un- 

 restricted, leads the dreamer and the enthusiast into 

 engulfing quicksands of illusions and delusions. 

 Hence the necessity of curbing a faculty so that in 

 unison with reason, it works towards definite ends 

 within the domain marking man's limits of service. 

 As Dr. Maudsley reminds us in his sane and sober 

 book on Natural Causes and Supernatural Seemings, 

 ' not by standing out of nature in the ecstasy of 

 a rapt and over-strained idealism of any sort, but by 

 large and close and faithful converse with nature 

 and human nature in all their moods, aspects, and 

 relations, is the solid basis of fruitful ideals and the 

 soundest mental development laid. The endeavour 

 to stimulate and strain any mental function to an 

 activity beyond the reach and need of a physical 

 correlate in external nature, and to give it an inde- 

 pendent value, is certainly an endeavour to go 

 directly contrary to the sober and salutary method 

 by which solid human development has taken place 

 in the past, and is taking place in the present.' 



The story of Darwin's work must now be 

 resumed. Shortly after the Linnean meeting, he 

 prepared a series of chapters which, always regarded 

 by him as an ' Abstract,' ultimately took book form, 

 and was published, under the title of the Origin of 

 Species, on the 24th November 1859. 



