FUNCTION AND ENVIRONMENT 187 



visions " pense*es de la jeunesse, executes 

 dans Page mur " which his indocile refusals 

 to submit to outworn university curricula 

 had made possible, which the " Beagle " 

 voyage made fuller and more vivid, which 

 an unrivalled British doggedness made ever 

 more positive and real visions of the web 

 of life, of the fountain of change within the 

 organism, of the struggle for existence and its 

 winnowing, and of the spreading genealogical 

 tree. Because, in the second place, he put 

 so much grit into the substantiation of his 

 visions, putting them to the proof in an argu- 

 ment which is of its kind direct demonstra- 

 tion being out of the question quite un- 

 equalled. Because, in the third place, he 

 broke down the opposition which the most 

 scientific had felt to the seductive modal 

 formula of evolution, by bringing forward a 

 more workable theory of the process than had 

 been previously stated. Nor can we forget, 

 since questions of this magnitude are human 

 and not merely academic, that he wrote, in 

 his mingled simplicity and condescension, 

 so that all men could understand. 



THEORIES OF EVOLUTION, CLASSIFIED. 

 So far the general doctrine of descent; but 

 some of the pioneers did more than apply 

 the evolution idea as a modal formula of 



