THE WORLD INTO WHICH DARWIN WAS BORN 19 



among scientific men in his early days was naturally 

 communicated to a lad born of a scientific family, and 

 inheriting directly in blood and bone the biological 

 tastes and tendencies of Erasmus Darwin. In the 

 second place, the existence of such a deep and wide- 

 spread curiosity as to ultimate origins, and the common 

 prevalence of profound uniformitarian and evolutionary 

 views among philosophers and thinkers, made the accept- 

 ance of Charles Darwin's particular theory, when it at 

 last arrived, a comparatively easy and certain matter, 

 because by it the course of organic development was 

 assimilated, on credible grounds, to the course of all 

 other development in general, as then already widely 

 recognised. The first consideration helps us to account 

 in part for the man himself; the second consideration 

 helps us even more to account for the great work which 

 he was enabled in the end so successfully to accomplish. 



