THE WORLD INTO WHICH DARWIN WAS BORN 5 



How far Darwin's special idea of natural selection 

 supplemented and rendered credible the earlier idea of 

 descent with modification we shall see more fully when 

 we come to treat of the inception and growth of his 

 great epoch-making work, ' The Origin of Species ; ' 

 for the present, it must suffice to point out that in the 

 world into which he was born, the theory of evolution 

 already existed in a more or less shadowy and un- 

 developed shape. And since it was his task in life to 

 raise this theory from the rank of a mere plausible and 

 happy guess to the rank of a highly elaborate and 

 almost universally accepted biological system, we may 

 pause awhile to consider on the threshold what was the 

 actual state of natural science at the moment when the 

 great directing and organising intelligence of Charles 

 Darwin first appeared. 



From time immemorial, in modern Christendom at 

 least, it had been the general opinion of learned and 

 simple alike that every species of plant or animal owed 

 its present form and its original existence to a distinct 

 act of special creation. This naif belief, unsupported 

 as it was by any sort of internal evidence, was supposed 

 to rest directly upon the express authority of a few 

 obscure statements in the Book of Genesis. The Creator, 

 it was held, had in the beginning formed each kind 

 after a particular pattern, had endowed it with special 

 organs devised with supreme wisdom for subserving 

 special functions, and had bestowed upon it the mystical 

 power of reproducing its like in its own image to all 

 generations. No variation of importance ever occurred 

 within the types thus constituted; all plants and animals 

 always retained their special forms unaltered in any 

 2 



