86 CHARLES DARWIN 



telegraph and the telephone; with the nebular hypo- 

 thesis, and with spectrum analysis. It was so, too, 

 with the evolutionary movement. The fertile upturning 

 of virgin sod in the biological field which produced 

 Darwin's forerunners, as regards the idea of descent 

 with modification, in the persons of Buffon, Lamarck, 

 and Erasmus Darwin, necessarily produced a little later, 

 under the fresh impetus of the Malthusian conception, 

 his forerunners or coadjutors, as regards the idea of 

 natural selection, in the persons of Wells, Matthew, and 

 Wallace. It was Darwin's task to recognise the uni- 

 versal, where Wells and Spencer had seen only the 

 particular ; to build up a vast and irresistible inductive 

 system, where Matthew and Wallace had but thrown 

 out a pregnant hint of wonderful a priori interest and 

 suggestiveness. It is one thing to draw out the idea of 

 a campaign, another thing to carry it to a successful 

 conclusion ; one thing rudely to sketch a ground-plan, 

 another thing finally to pile aloft to the sky the front 

 of an august and imposing fabric. 



As soon as the papers at the Linnean had been read 

 and printed, Darwin set to work in real earnest to bring 

 out the first instalment of his great work. That instal- 

 ment was the ' Origin of Species.' The first edition 

 was ready for the public on November the 24th, 1859. 



In his own mind Darwin regarded that immortal 

 work merely in the light of an abstract of his projected 

 volumes. So immense were his collections and so 

 voluminous his notes that the ' Origin of Species ' itself 

 seemed to him like a mere small portion of the contem- 

 plated publication. And indeed he did ultimately work 

 out several other portions of his original plan in his 



