THE DARWINIAN REVOLUTION BEGINS 129 



Rolleston was bringing up a fresh generation of young 

 biologists in the new faith; at Cambridge, Darwin's 

 old university, a whole school of brilliant and accurate 

 physiologists was beginning to make itself both felt 

 and heard in the world of science. In the domain of 

 anthropology, Tylor was welcoming the assistance of the 

 new ideas, while Lubbock was engaged on his kindred 

 investigations into the Origin of Civilisation and the 

 Primitive Condition of Man. All these diverse lines 

 of thought both showed the wide-spread influence of 

 Darwin's first great work, and led up to the prepara- 

 tion of his second, in which he dealt with the his- 

 tory and development of the human race. And what 

 was thus true of England was equally true of the 

 civilised world, regarded as a whole : everywhere the 

 great evolutionary movement was well in progress; 

 everywhere the impulse sent forth from that quiet 

 Kentish home was permeating and quickening the entire 

 pulse of intelligent humanity. 



Why was it that the ' Origin of Species ' possessed 

 this extraordinary vitalising and kinetic power, this 

 germinal energy, this contagious force, beyond all other 

 forms of evolutionism previously promulgated ? Why 

 did the world, that listened so coldly to Lamarck and 

 Chambers, turn so ready an ear to Charles Darwin and 

 natural selection? Partly, no doubt, because in the 

 fulness of time the moment had come and the prophet 

 had arisen. All great movements are long brewing, 

 and burst out at last (like the Reformation and the 

 French Revolution) with explosive energy. But the 

 cause is largely to be found, also, I believe, in the 

 peculiar nature of the Darwinian solution. True, a 



