32 Charles Robert Darwin. 



To these general publications must be added many papers 

 contributed to different societies and printed only in their 

 archives. As I have read the titles you have noticed that 

 a great majority belong to books of a botanical series. And 

 it is true of Darwin that while his earlier writings, before 

 the " Origin of Species," were mainly geological, those of 

 his later life were mainly botanical. He never professed 

 to be a botanist ; he disclaimed the right to be considered 

 one ; but one of the first of living botanists has said of him 

 that " each of his botanical investigations, taken on its own 

 merits, would alone have made the reputation of any ordi- 

 nary botanist." But even the aggregate of these separate 

 investigations does not afford a measure of Darwin's con- 

 tribution to botanical science. The general influence on 

 this science of his leading doctrine has been incalculably 

 great. Before the announcement of this doctrine the ge- 

 ographical distribution of plants was an insoluble riddle. 

 To-day it is a riddle that has been as completely read as any 

 that the mighty Sphinx of nature has propounded to man- 

 kind. 



But to return to Darwin's greatest and most character- 

 istic work, "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Se- 

 lection," published in 1859. Original and revolutionary as 

 it was, it is possible to exaggerate its novelty. " What is 

 the theory it propounds ? " asks one of its interpreters,, 

 and answers : " Broadly, this : The unity of all organic nat- 

 ure ; that all animals now living — and similarly all plants 

 — are connected, forming one great family ; and not only 

 so, but that they are connected with those of all past ages, 

 and are in fact derived from them." And this is a concise 

 and admirable statement of the popular idea of Darwin's 

 greatest work. But it is a most erroneous idea. If such a 

 doctrine had been exhaustive of Darwin's famous book, it 

 would have had but little claim to novelty. For in 1859 

 this doctrine of the organic and genetic unity of plant and 

 animal life upon the earth had already many powerful ad- 

 vocates. Goethe was one of them, Treviranus was another, 

 Lamarck another, Erasmus Darwin another, our own Emer- 

 son another, the author of " The Vestiges of the Natural 

 History of Creation" another, Herbert Spencer another and 

 the most notable of all. Those who imagine that Darwin's 

 characteristic doctrine was the genetic continuity of terres- 

 trial life, both vegetable and animal, would do well to read 



