SCIENCE AND THE THOUGHT OF THE WORLD 



for the progress of mankind, the two great revolutions of 

 opinion of which I have been speaking, especially the 

 one that came a little later, and will for all time be 

 associated with the name of Charles Darwin, of which the 

 innate vitality is so great that it has already grown into a 

 great tree of knowledge bearing all manner of fruit. It 

 is indeed true that before Darwin the idea of a continuous 

 development, alike in the physical and biological worlds, 

 had formed the basis of speculations in many quarters ; 

 but this conception, being contrary to current belief, 

 had left no impression on the general mind. It was not 

 until Darwin's works appeared that the new evidence was 

 perceived to be overwhelming in favour of the view that 

 man is not an independent being standing alone, but 

 is the outcome of a general and orderly evolution. It 

 follows from this view, that the principle of evolution 

 must henceforth take a guiding place in the consideration 

 of all problems relating to man, to the history of his funda- 

 mental convictions and opinions, as well as to all social 

 and economic questions of the present and of the future. 



To the open eye all the world is indeed a stage, the 

 boards themselves having been laid by an earlier evolution, 

 on which, through ages, the drama of the orderly evolu- 

 tion of living things has been going on. Through the 

 revelations of palaeontology we can, in imagination, become 

 spectators of the scenes of the earlier acts of the slow 

 progress of events leading up to the entrance upon the 



stage of man himself. Then in archaeology and history, 



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