THE CENTURY'S PROGRESS IN BIOLOGY 



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 char- 

 acter, for intellect, for what he was and what he did, 

 perhaps the most Socratic figure of the century. When, 

 in 1882, he died, friend and foe alike conceded that one of 

 the greatest sons of men had rested from his labors, and 

 all the world felt it fitting that the remains of Charles 

 Darwin should be entombed in Westminster Abbey, 

 close beside the honored grave of Isaac Newton. Nor 

 were there many who would dispute the justice of Hux- 

 ley's estimate of his accomplishment : " He found a great 

 truth trodden under foot. Reviled by bigots, and ridiculed 

 by all the world, he lived long enough to see it, chiefly by 

 his own efforts, irrefragably established in science, in- 

 separably incorporated with the common thoughts of men, 

 and only hated and feared by those who would revile, but 

 dare not." 



VI 



Wide as are the implications of the great truth which 

 Darwin and his co-workers established, however, it 

 leaves quite untouched the problem of the origin of 

 those "favored variations" upon which it operates. 

 That such variations are due to fixed and determinate 

 causes no one understood better than Darwin ; but in 

 his original exposition of his doctrine he made no as- 

 sumption as to what these causes are. He accepted the 

 observed fact of variation as constantly witnessed, for 

 example, in the differences between parents and off- 

 spring and went ahead from this assumption. 



317 



