THE NET RESULT 197 



personal observation, of minute experiment, of world- 

 wide book-knowledge, of universal scientific ability, such 

 as never perhaps was lavished by any other man upon 

 any other department of study. His conspicuous and 

 beautiful love of truth, his unflinching candour, his 

 transparent fearlessness and honesty of purpose, his 

 child-like simplicity, his modesty of demeanour, his 

 charming manner, his affectionate disposition, his kind- 

 liness to friends, his courtesy to opponents, his gentleness 

 to harsh and often bitter assailants, kindled in the minds 

 of men of science everywhere throughout the world a 

 contagious enthusiasm, only equalled perhaps among the 

 disciples of Socrates and the great teachers of the 

 revival of learning. His name became a rallying-point 

 for the children of light in every country ; and what 

 philosophers and speculators might have taken a century 

 or two more to establish in embryo was firmly grounded, 

 never to be overthrown, by the vast accumulations of 

 fact and argument in the ' Origin of Species,' and its 

 companion volumes. 



The end of that great Darwinian revolution the 

 world has not yet seen : in a sense, indeed, it will never 

 see it. For the general acceptance of Darwin's theory, 

 which we may watch progressing around us every 

 minute to-day, implies a complete bouleversement of 

 anthropocentric ideas, a total change in our human con- 

 ception of our own relations to the world and the 

 universe, which must work out for ever increasingly 

 wide-reaching and complex effects in all our dealings 

 with one another and with the environment at large. 

 There is no department of human thought or human 

 action which evolutionism leaves exactly where it stood 

 18 



