THE PERIOD OF INCUBATION 61 



of the whole field of nature in a thousand petty details 

 piecemeal. They have to be driven by repeated beating 

 into the right path. Everywhere they fancy they see 

 the loophole of an objection, which must be carefully 

 closed beforehand against them with anticipatory 

 argument, as we close hedges by the wayside against 

 the obtrusive donkey with a cautious bunch of 

 thorny brambles. Even if Charles Darwin had hit 

 upon the fundamental idea of natural selection, and 

 had published it, as Wallace did, in the form of a mere 

 splendid aperpu, he would never have revolutionised 

 the world of biology. When the great discovery was 

 actually promulgated, it was easy enough to win the 

 assent of philosophical thinkers like Herbert Spencer ; 

 easy enough, even, to gain the ready adhesion of non- 

 biological but kindred minds, like Leslie Stephen's and 

 John Morley's; those might all, perhaps, have been 

 readily convinced by far less heavy and crushing artillery 

 than that so triumphantly marshalled together in the 

 * Origin of Species.' But in order to command the slow 

 and grudging adhesion of the rank and file of scientific 

 workers, the ' hodmen of science,' as Professor Huxley 

 calls them, it was needful to bring together an imposing 

 array of closely serried facts, to secure every post in 

 the rear before taking a single step onward, and to 

 bring to bear upon every antagonist the exact form of 

 argument with which he was already thoroughly familiar. 

 It was by carefully pursuing these safe and cautious phi- 

 losophical tactics that Charles Darwin gained his great 

 victory. Where others were pregnant, he was cogent. 

 He met the Dryasdusts of science on their own ground, 

 and he put them fairly to flight with their own weapons. 



