452 TUE BIOCOSMOS HISTORICAL. 



II. BEFORE DARWIN AND AFTER. 



Having evolved the one central man who 

 has practically evolved Evolution, we may 

 trace briefly the line of predecessors into him, 

 and the line of successors out of him. The 

 Hero of the Biocosmos, in so far as this has 

 yet unfolded, is Darwin, who possessed the 

 power of conquering his age with his thought, 

 and stamping upon it his fundamental cate- 

 gory. His was the regnant biological Ego 

 that designates his supremacy as well as his 

 limit. For he was not the universal genius, 

 even in the realm of Nature ; biocosmical was 

 his field, rather confinedly fenced off from 

 every other domain of knowledge. He has 

 himself marked down his own spiritual 

 bounds with candor and modesty. But within 

 his kingdom he is the monarch. 



Still the science which he stands for, that of 

 Evolution, is itself an Evolution, and has a 

 number of ascending stages each of which is 

 usually represented by an important person, 

 who has his own biography or individual Evo- 

 lution. All of these taken together in succes- 

 sion will show the history of the science afore- 

 said. That is, we are to see Evolution itself 

 evolving up to the point at which it becomes 

 aware of itself and formulates itself as a 



