272 EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE 
horses and cattle, pigeons and fowl, and countless 
fruits and flowers, through human agency. How is 
this done? Simply through selection. I need not 
follow the steps by which Darwin reached his conclu- 
sions. Selection by man could not account for the 
origin of species, but the leap of inference which Dar- 
win took from human selection to natural selection, 
the masterly way in which he proved that the survival 
of favoured individuals in the struggle for existence 
must operate as a process of selection, incessant, ubiqui- 
tous and unavoidable, so that all living things are from 
birth to death under its sway; this was of course one 
of the most memorable achievements of the human 
mind. It was in the highest sense poetic work, intro- 
ducing mankind to a new world of thought. But let 
us not fail to observe that its scientific character lay in 
its appealing to familiar agencies to assist in interpret- 
ing the unknown. Just how far Darwin’s theory of 
natural selection covered the whole ground of the phe- 
nomena to be explained is still a question. I believe 
the ultimate verdict will be that it was far from cover- 
ing the whole ground; but it covered so much ground, 
it was substantiated and verified in such a host of 
cases, as to win general assent to the doctrine of evo- 
lution which had before 1860 been accepted only by a 
comparatively few leading minds. 
In this connection let me for the thousandth time 
point out the fallacy of the common notion that we 
owe to Charles Darwin the doctrine of evolution. 
Nothing of the sort. On the other hand, there were 
large portions of the general theory of evolution 
which Darwin did not even understand. His theory 
of descent by modifications through the agency of 
