' THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES' 85 



generic divergences of structure. In snort, in his own 

 words, the paragraph ' contains merely a passing recog- 

 nition of the selective process, and indicates no suspicion 

 of the enormous range of its effects, or of the conditions 

 under which a large part of its effects are produced.' 

 On the other hand, it must be noted that both Spencer 

 and Matthew, like Darwin himself, based their ideas 

 largely upon the Malthusian principle, and thus held 

 the two true keys of the situation fairly within their 

 unconscious hands. 



Frankly to recognise these various foreshadowings 

 of the distinctive Darwinian theory of natural selection 

 is not in any way to undermine the foundations of 

 Charles Darwin's own real and exceptional greatness. 

 On the contrary, the mere fact that his views were so 

 far anticipated by Wells, Matthew, Spencer, and others, 

 and were simultaneously arrived at across half the 

 globe by the independent intellect of Alfred Russel 

 Wallace, is in itself the very best proof and finest 

 criterion of Charles Darwin's genuine apostleship. No 

 truly grand and fruitful idea was ever yet the sole 

 property of a single originator. Great discoveries, says 

 an acute critic, must always be concerned with some 

 problem of the time which many of the world's foremost 

 minds are just then cudgelling their active brains about. 

 It was so with the discovery of the differential calculus, 

 and of the planet Neptune ; with the interpretation of 

 the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and of the cuneiform in- 

 scriptions; with the undulatory theory of light, with 

 the mechanical equivalent of heat, with the doctrine of 

 the correlation and conservation of energies, with the 

 invention of the steam engine, the locomotive, the 



