88 Heredity and Variation in Modern Lights 



But apart from the invention of this reasonable hypothesis, which 

 may well, as Huxley estimated, "be the guide of biological and 

 psychological speculation for the next three or four generations," 

 Darwin made a more significant and imperishable contribution. Not 

 for a few generations, but through all ages he should be remem- 

 bered as the first who showed clearly that the problems of Heredity 

 and Variation are soluble by observation, and laid down the course 

 by which we must proceed to their solution 1 . The moment of in- 

 spiration did not come with the reading of Malthus, but with the 

 opening of the "first note-book on Transmutation of Species 2 ." Evolu- 

 tion is a process of Variation and Heredity. The older writers, 

 though they had some vague idea that it must be so, did not study 

 Variation and Heredity. Darwin did, and so begat not a theory, but 

 a science. 



The extent to which this is true, the scientific world is only be- 

 ginning to realise. So little was the fact appreciated in Darwin's 

 own time that the success of his writings was followed by an almost 

 total cessation of work in that special field. Of the causes which 

 led to this remarkable consequence I have spoken elsewhere. They 

 proceeded from circumstances peculiar to the time ; but whatever 

 the causes there is no doubt that this statement of the result is 

 historically exact, and those who make it their business to collect 

 facts elucidating the physiology of Heredity and Variation are well 

 aware that they will find little to reward their quest in the leading 

 scientific Journals of the Darwinian epoch. 



In those thirty years the original stock of evidence current and 

 in circulation even underwent a process of attrition. As in the story 

 of the Eastern sage who first wrote the collected learning of the 

 universe for his sons in a thousand volumes, and by successive com- 

 pression and burning reduced them to one, and from this by further 

 burning distilled the single ejaculation of the Faith, "There is no 

 god but God and Mohamed is the Prophet of God," which was all his 

 maturer wisdom deemed essential : — so in the books of that period do 

 we find the corpus of genetic knowledge dwindle to a few prerogative 

 instances, and these at last to the brief formula of an unquestioned 

 creed. 



1 Whatever be our estimate of the importance of Natural Selection, in this we all agree. 

 Samuel Butler, the most brilliant, and by far the most interesting of Darwin's 

 opponents — whose works are at length emerging from oblivion — in his Preface (1882) to 

 the 2nd edition of Evolution, Old and New, repeats his earlier expression of homage to 

 one whom he had come to regard as an enemy: "To the end of time, if the question be 

 asked, 'Who taught people to believe in Evolution?' the answer must be that it was 

 Mr. Darwin. This is true, and it is hard to see what palm of higher praise can be 

 awarded to any philosopher." 



2 Life and Letters, i. pp. 276 and 83. 



