182 PART IV. -PREPARATORY STAGE. 



thought will avenge itself, and that we should not commence 

 an investigation where the simpler facts are as yet unexplored, 

 unless indeed we set ourselves the task of ascertaining the 

 simpler facts. Elementary mathematics, concerned as it is with 

 idealised facts of the most primitive order was therefore the 

 first science, and cosmology, as the science of sciences, will, 

 because of its stupendous complexity, be the last. The latter 

 depends on the triumph of the physical, as well as of the bio- 

 logical and cultural, sciences, and since all, save the first, are 

 in their childhood, philosophers must yet for a long time wander 

 in the wilderness. 



If Darwin had not had at his disposal the socially collected 

 facts relating to geology, paleontology, 1 zoological and botanical 

 morphology and physiology, embryology, the geographical dis- 

 tribution of animals and plants, and domestic breeding, and 

 still had pressed on the attention of the public his theory of 

 natural selection, he would have been an idle dreamer, and 

 not the honoured man of science he was. However, the as- 

 sistance lent to Darwin went even further. The evolution 

 theory had been popularised by Buffon, Lamarck, and Geoffrey 

 St.-Hilaire in France, and by Erasmus Darwin, Lyell, Chambers,- 

 Herbert Spencer, and sundry others, in England; the curious 

 tale told by the rocks forced biologists to speculate concerning 

 the genesis of species, and the principal dynamic fact in 

 Darwin's theory was supplied by Malthus. :! A close historic 

 survey would probably reveal that Darwin's conception was in 

 the air and would have developed irrespectively of him, as is 

 in reality illustrated by Alfred Russell Wallace arriving inde- 

 pendently, and about the same time, at the same conclusion. 

 In 1851 the Outlines of Comparative Physiology touching the 

 structure and development of the races of animals living and 

 extinct, by Louis Agassiz, appeared in a second edition. In 

 this work, itself the development of an earlier one, the last 

 chapter terminates with a series of conclusions, whereof the 



1 "Since The Origin of Species was written, our knowledge of this record 

 has been enormously extended, and we now possess, not complete volumes, 

 it is true, but some remarkably full and illuminating chapters." (W. B. Scott, 

 Chapter on "The Palseontological Record [I. Animals]," in Darwin and Modern 

 Science, ed. by A. C. Seward, 1909.) 



2 "Chambers himself only gave unity to thoughts already in wide cir- 

 culation." (Quoted from A. W. Benn, by A. C. Haddon, History of Anthro- 

 pology, p. 61.) 



"Darwin's great achievement was to formulate this law; though it is 

 only fair to add that it was discovered by A. R. Wallace at the same 

 moment. Both of them got the first hint of it from Malthus." (R. R. Marett, 

 Anthropology, p. 69.) The theories of both Malthus and Darwin, again, were 

 reflections or expressions of the competitive spirit in social affairs prevalent 

 in their time. (See G. Papillault, in Le progres, 1913.) This method of 

 tracing the origin of ideas to other than logical or speculative sources is 

 admirably illustrated in those works of Rudolf Eucken which deal with the 

 history of philosophj-. 



