THE COMING OF EVOLUTION 209 



whereby the redundant individuals are eliminated. 

 In later editions of the book, he admitted the import- 

 ance of the prudential check, which then acted chiefly 

 in the postponement of marriage, and thus, as far as 

 man is concerned, destroyed his main contention in 

 its striking simplicity. 



Darwin has himself recorded the effect of this work 

 on his mind. " In October 1838," he says, " I hap- 

 pened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, 

 and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle 

 for existence which everywhere goes on from long- 

 continued observation of the habits of animals and 

 plants, it at once struck me that under these circum- 

 stances favourable variations would tend to be pre- 

 served, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The 

 result of this would be the formation of new species. 

 Here then I had a theory by which to work." 



The man to whom came this flash of insight was 

 well fitted both by heredity and environment to make 

 full use of it. Charles Robert Darwin 

 (1809-1882) was the son of a remarkably 

 able country doctor of ample means, Robert Waring 

 Darwin of Shrewsbury. His grandfathers were Eras- 

 mus Darwin, of whom we have already written, and 

 Josiah Wedgwood, the potter of Etruria, who also was 

 a man of scientific power and ingenuity. The Wedg- 

 woods were Staffordshire people, an old family of small 

 landowners ; but the Darwins, of the same landed class, 

 came from the Anglo-Danish country of Lincolnshire, 

 and Charles Darwin's outward share of inheritance 

 from the Northern race was made manifest by his 

 tall stature and blue-grey eyes. Educated at Edin- 



14 



