THEORIES OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



that man being Herbert Spencer. But the Origin of 

 Species came, as Huxley has said, like a flash in the 

 darkness, enabling the benighted voyager to see the 

 way. The score of years during which its author had 

 waited and worked had been years well spent. Dar- 

 win had become, as he himself says, a veritable Crcesus, 

 "overwhelmed with his riches in facts" facts of zo- 

 ology, of selective artificial breeding, of geographical 

 distribution of animals, of embryology, of paleontology. 

 He had massed his facts about his theory, condensed 

 them and recondensed, until his volume of five hun- 

 dred pages was an encyclopaedia in scope. During 

 those long years of musing he had thought out al- 

 most every conceivable objection to his theory, and 

 in his book every such objection was stated with full- 

 est force and candor, together with such reply as the 

 facts at command might dictate. It was the force 

 of those twenty years of effort of a master-mind that 

 made the sudden breach in the breastwork of current 

 thought. 



Once this breach was effected the work of conquest 

 went rapidly on. Day by day squads of the enemy 

 capitulated and struck their arms. By the time an- 

 other score of years had passed the doctrine of evolu- 

 tion had become the working hypothesis of the scien- 

 tific world. The revolution had been effected. 



And from amid the wreckage of opinion and belief 

 stands forth the figure of Charles Darwin, calm, imper- 

 turbable, serene; scatheless to ridicule, contumely, 

 abuse; unspoiled by ultimate success; unsullied alike 

 by the strife and the victory take him for all in all, 

 for character, for intellect, for what he was and what 



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