CHAPTER II 

 DARWIN AND WALLACE 



WE have seen in the last chapter that whenever 

 men have actively thought they have attempted to 

 explain the origin of plants and animals as well as 

 of themselves. No one who wrote previous to the 

 time of Charles Darwin had expressed any idea con- 

 cerning this matter with force enough to convince 

 any large portion of the thinking world. If Lamarck 

 had fallen on better times, if the great Cuvier had not 

 laughed him to scorn, if Goethe had found him out 

 and made him known to the world, evolution might 

 have come into its own sooner. None of these con- 

 ditions arose, and it remained for Charles Darwin 

 to give to the world in clear and cogent form the 

 thought of evolution. He gathered so much material 

 before he expressed his opinions, and looked at the 

 matter from so many sides that, when he published 

 his results, he had foreseen most of the objections 

 which were subsequently to arise in opposition to his 

 announcement. Charles Darwin is recognized to-day 

 as the father of the evolutionary movement. 



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