THE STORY OF NINETEENTH-CENT IJ1IY SCIENCE 



them not one who acknowledged a doctrine of transmu- 

 tation. The reaction from the standpoint of Lamarck 

 and Erasmus Darwin and Goethe had been complete, 

 and when Charles Darwin avowed his own conviction 

 he expected always to have it met with ridicule or 

 contempt. In 1857 there was but one man speaking 

 with any large degree of authority in the world who 

 openly avowed a belief in transmutation of species that 

 man being Herbert Spencer. But the Origin of Species 

 came, as Huxley has said, like a flash in the darkness, en- 

 abling the benighted voyager to see the way. The score 

 of years during which its author had waited and worked 

 had been years well spent. Darwin had become, as he 

 himself says, a veritable Croesus, " overwhelmed with 

 his riches in facts " facts of zoology, of selective artifi- 

 cial breeding, of geographical distribution of animals, of 

 embryology, of paleontology. He had massed his facts 

 about his theory, condensed them and recondensed, un- 

 til his volume of five hundred pages was an encyclo- 

 paedia in scope. During those long years of musing he 

 had thought out almost every conceivable objection to 

 his theory, and in his book every such objection was 

 stated with fullest 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 another 

 score of years had passed the doctrine of evolution had 

 become the working hypothesis of the scientific world, 

 The revolution had been effected. 



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