PBEFACE 



IN this little volume I have endeavoured to present the 

 life and work of Charles Darwin viewed as a moment 

 in a great revolution, in due relation both to those who 

 went before and to those who come after him. Recog- 

 nising, as has been well said, that the wave makes 

 the crest, not the crest the wave, I have tried to let my 

 hero fall naturally into his proper place in a vast onward 

 movement of the human intellect, of which he was 

 himself at once a splendid product and a moving cause 

 of the first importance. I have attempted to show him 

 both as receiving the torch from Lamarck and Malthus, 

 and as passing it on with renewed brilliancy to the wide 

 school of evolutionary thinkers whom his work was 

 instrumental in arousing to fresh and vigorous activity 

 along a thousand separate and varied lines of thought 

 and action. 



As Mr. Francis Darwin was already engaged upon a 

 life of his father, I should have shrunk from putting 



