CHARLES DAE WIN. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE WORLD INTO WHICH DARWIN WAS BORN. 



CHARLES DARWIN was a great man, and he accomplished 

 a great work. The Newton of biology, he found the 

 science of life a chaotic maze; he left it an orderly 

 system, with a definite plan and a recognisable meaning. 

 Great men are not accidents; great works are not 

 accomplished in a single day. Both are the product 

 of adequate causes. The great man springs from an 

 ancestry competent to produce him ; he is the final 

 flower and ultimate outcome of converging hereditary 

 forces, that culminate at last in the full production of 

 his splendid and exceptional personality. The great 

 work which it is his mission to perform in the world is 

 never wholly of his own inception. It also is the last 

 effect of antecedent conditions, the slow result of ten- 

 dencies and ideas long working unseen or but little 

 noticed beneath the surface of opinion, yet all gradually 

 conspiring together towards the definitive revolution at 

 whose head, in the fulness of time, the as yet unborn 

 genius is destined to place himself. This is especially 



