10 DEGENERATION : I 



greatest of living naturalists I would say that greatest 

 of living men Charles Darwin. 



In the form in which Mr. Darwin presented his 

 view to the world it was no longer a mere guess. He 

 had already tried it and proved it in an immense 

 series of observations ; it had already been converted 

 by twenty years' labour on his part into an estab- 

 lished doctrine, and the twenty years which have 

 passed since he published the Origin of Species have 

 only served to confirm, by thousands of additional 

 tests, the truth of his original guess. 



Space will not allow me to go fully into the history 

 of the Darwinian theory, but it is necessary for my 

 present purpose that I should state precisely what 

 that theory is. It involves a number of subordinate 

 hypotheses which, together with the main hypothesis, 

 furnish us with a complete " explanation," as it is 

 called, of the facts which have been ascertained as to 

 living things ; in other words, it assigns living things 

 to their causes, gives them their place in the Order of 

 Nature. 



It is a very general popular belief at the present 

 day that the Darwinian theory is simply no more 

 than a capricious and anti-theological assertion that 

 mankind are the modified descendants of ape-like 

 ancestors. 



Though most of my readers, I do not doubt, 

 know how imperfect and erroneous a conception this 

 is, yet I shall not, I think, be wasting time in stating 

 what the Darwinian theory really is. In fact, it is so 

 continuously misrepresented and misunderstood, that 



