INTRODUCTION. 427 



vegetable kingdoms.' 1 Thus also lie applied 

 the Galapagos Islands as a kind of measuring- 

 rod to the whole earth, dividing it up into so 

 many insular units of the migration of flora 

 and fauna, and hence of geographical distri- 

 bution, as well as of variation. 



The individual Darwin is, accordingly, a 

 product of his environment working with his 

 inherited gifts. As stated some pages back 

 there was an insular element in his character 

 and career, otherwise he would never have 

 evolved Evolution by Natural Selection. An 

 insular Evolution had evolved him the evolver 

 of insular Evolution. The sight of the Gala- 

 pagos Islands, and their living inhabitants, 

 brought him to a consciousness of his own 

 deepest self and of his life's task; they were 

 Nature's outer manifestation of what lay in 

 him, and so he beheld himself in them as in 

 a mirror. He as naturalist had found his true 

 counterpart in Nature, and began at once to 

 unfold and describe what he saw. He had dis- 

 covered the world (or quite a fragment there- 

 of), and then he sets about discovering himself 

 in the world everywhere. 



This brings us to a new stage of his devel- 

 opment or personal evolution; and we are led 

 to ask what are all these stages. Darwin's 

 individual evolution to the point where he saw 

 and evolved organic evolution, making the 



