LITERARY WORK, ETC. 233 



But as soon as my agent read the MSS. he suggested that 

 I should write a volume on the subject, which he was sure 

 would be very attractive and popular, and for which he 

 undertook to make arrangements both in England and 

 America, and to secure me liberal terms. After a little 

 consideration I thought I could do so, and terms were ar- 

 ranged for the book before the article itself was published. 

 This enabled me to get together all the necessary materials and 

 to begin work at once, and after six months of the stiffest 

 reading and study I ever undertook, the book was completed 

 in September, and published in November of the same year. 

 In November of 1904 a cheaper edition was published, with 

 an additional chapter in an Appendix. This chapter con- 

 tained an entirely new argument, founded on the theory of 

 organic evolution, which I had not time to introduce into the 

 first edition. This argument is itself so powerful that, when 

 compounded with the arguments founded on astronomical, 

 physical, and physiological phenomena, it renders the im- 

 probability of there having been two independent develop- 

 ments of organic life culminating in man, so great as to be 

 absolutely inconceivable. 



The success of this volume, and the entirely new circle of 

 readers it brought me, caused my publishers to urge me to 

 prepare the present work, which I should otherwise have not 

 written at all, or only on a very much smaller scale for the 

 infomation of my family as to my early life. 



Now it seems to me a very suggestive fact that my 

 literary work during the last ten years should have been so 

 completely determined by two circumstances which must be 

 considered, in the ordinary sense of the term, and in relation 

 to my own volition, matters of chance. If Dr. Lunn had not 

 invited me to Davos, and if he had suggested " Darwinism ' 

 or any other of my special subjects instead of the " Science 

 of the Nineteenth Century," I should not have written my 

 " Wonderful Century " ! I should not have had my attention 

 so specially directed to great astronomical problems ; I should 

 not, when asked for an article, have chosen the subject 

 of our sun's central position ; and I should certainly never 



