DARWIN 331 



nothing.' The rocks, the fossils, the hfe of the 

 continents and islands passed before his mind 

 like a panorama of that grand history which had 

 come singly and in fragments to every evolution- 

 ist preceding him. 



Only a few decades back, Humboldt had taken 

 a somewhat similar journey in South America 

 and had written: 



This phenomenon [the distribution of plants] is 

 one of the most curious in the history of organic 

 forms. I say history, for in vain would reason forbid 

 man to form hypotheses upon the origin of things; 

 he still goes on puzzling himself with insoluble prob- 

 lems relating to the distribution of beings. 



The same phenomena came to Darwin's mind 

 as the greatest and most pressing for solution, 

 and he returned from this voyage determined to 

 solve the problem of the origin of species by in- 

 duction. There were but two theories to choose 

 from — the special creation theory and the trans- 

 mutation theory. He took them up with an open 

 mind. 



Now let us see how the full-grown evolution 

 idea came to him. There is no evidence that he 

 read any of the literature we have been consid- 

 ering ; he was from the first an original observer 

 and naturalist rather than a natural philosopher 

 or student of causes. At the age of eighteen, while 

 in the University of Edinburgh, he formed the 



