HOW TO THINK 



as old as Anaximander the Greek, perhaps even older. 

 Even "natural selection," which is the idea usually 

 spoken of as Darwinian, had been advocated, as Dar- 

 win himself points out, long before he published his 

 Origin oj Species. 



Lamarck had been the avowed champion of Evolu- 

 tion fifty years before. But the world was not ready. 

 Darwin came when the labors of the new school of 

 geologists Hutton, Lyell, William Smith, Cuvier, and 

 their followers had created a new atmosphere and 

 prepared the way for a new view of animate creation. 

 Altogether similar is the history of the greatest scientific 

 discovery of the eighteenth century Jenner's dis- 

 covery of vaccination. The truth which Jenner dem- 

 onstrated to the world had been vaguely known 

 for generations in the farming communities of England. 

 It required the patient researches of a logical thinker 

 to find the way from vague popular belief to scientfiic 

 theory and demonstration. 



These, along with many other discoveries that have 

 placed their demonstrators on the highest rolls of fame, 

 do not of necessity involve extraordinary quickness of 

 perception, phenomenal retentiveness of memory, or un- 

 usual capacity to associate ideas. Many a man un- 

 known to fame has had more acute perceptive faculties 

 than Darwin or Jenner; countless men have had better 

 memories; countless others have had equal powers of 

 logical thinking. But these native powers have availed 

 them nothing, because they did not supply their minds 

 with adequate material with which to work. Dar- 

 win's theories would have been laughed to scorn by the 



