THE NET RESULT 195 



man stood in his own esteem the fixed point of an 

 anthropocentric universe, divinely born and divinely 

 instructed, with all the beasts of the field, and the fowls 

 of the air, and the fruits of the earth specially created 

 with a definite purpose in subservience to his lordly 

 wants and interests. The great biological revolution, 

 which rightly almost sums itself up in the name of 

 Darwin, reduced man at once to his true position as the 

 last product of kinetic solar energy, working upon the 

 peculiar chemical elements of an evolving planet. It 

 showed that every part of every plant and every animal 

 existed primarily for the sake of that plant or animal 

 alone ; it unseated man from his imaginary throne in 

 the centre of the cosmos, teaching him at once a lesson 

 of humility and a lesson of aspiration pointing out to 

 him how low was the origin from which, in very truth, 

 he first sprang, and suggesting to him, at the same 

 time, how high was the grand and glorious destiny to 

 which by his own strenuous and ardent efforts he might 

 yet perchance some day attain. 



That result, inevitable perhaps in the long run, from 

 the slow unfolding of human intelligence, was immensely 

 hastened in our own time by the peculiar idiosyncrasy 

 and lofty personality of Charles Darwin. Without him 

 we should have had, not only evolutionism, but also, as 

 Wallace's discovery testifies, natural selection itself into 

 the bargain. But we should never have had the ' Origin 

 of Species.' We should never have had that vast and 

 enthusiastic consensus of scientific opinion through an 

 all but unanimous thinking world, which has forced an 

 immediate acceptance of evolutionary ideas down the 

 unwilling throats of half unthinking Europe. The 



