THE STORY OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY SCIENCE 



tion." Not often before in the history of science has it 

 happened that a great theory has been nurtured in its 

 author's brain through infancy and adolescence to its 

 full legal majority before being sent out into the world. 

 Thus the fuse that led to the great po \vder-mine had 

 been lighted. The explosion itself came more than a 

 year later, in November, 1859, when Darwin, after thir- 

 teen months of further effort, completed the outline of 

 his theory, which was at first begun as an abstract for 

 the Linnaean Society, but which grew to the size of an 

 independent volume despite his efforts at condensation, 

 and which was given that ever-to-be-famous title, The 

 Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or the 

 Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. 

 And what an explosion it was ! The joint paper of 1858 

 had made a momentary flare, causing the hearers, as 

 Hooker said, to " speak of it with bated breath," but be- 

 yond that it made no sensation. What the result was 

 when the Origin itself appeared, no one of our genera- 

 tion need be told. The rumble and roar that it made in 

 the intellectual world have not yet altogether ceased to 

 echo after forty years of reverberation. 



v 



To the Origin of Species, then, and to its author, 

 Charles Darwin, must always be ascribed chief credit 

 for that vast revolution in the fundamental beliefs of 

 our race which has come about since 1859, and made 

 the second half of the century memorable. But it must 

 not be overlooked that no such sudden metamorphosis 

 could have been effected had it not been for the aid of a 

 few notable lieutenants, who rallied to the standards of 



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