46 EVOLUTION, SOCIAL AND ORGANIC 



limited by the amount of food available. 

 Therefpre, if two parents produce ten thousand 

 only two or three individuals will reach 

 maturity : the rest will perish. The remainder 

 of the problem, which still remained for Dar- 

 win to solve, was : first, is there any law which 

 determines which shall survive and which shall 

 be destroyed; and second, if there is such a 

 law, will that law explain and thus, at the 

 same time, prove, the origin of new species? 

 It is precisely because Darwin solved both 

 points of this tremendous problem with a 

 clear and irrefutable affirmative that he occu- 

 pies the foremost place in the annals of science. 



Professor John Fiske said: "There is one 

 thing which a man of original scientific or 

 philosophical genius in a rightly ordered world 

 should never be called upon to do. He should 

 never be called upon to earn a living ; for that 

 is a wretched waste of energy, in which the 

 highest intellectual power is sure to suflfer 

 serious detriment, and runs the risk of being 

 frittered away into hopeless ruin.'' 



Whether Fiske was right or wrong the only 

 pertinent point here is that Darwin was 

 spared that necessity. 



To his great task he brought a patience that 

 is almost without parallel. One of his bio- 

 graphers, Grant Allen, tells us that : "His uncle 



