SKCTION 20. STUDIES PREPARATORY TO ALL INVESTIGATIONS. 183 



first one is highly significant for our purpose: "From the above 

 sketch it is evident that there is a manifest progress in the 

 succession of beings on the surface of the earth. This progress 

 consists in an increasing similarity to the living fauna, and 

 among the vertebrata, especially, in their increasing resemblance 

 to man." (P. 417.) Sir John Herschel had, by 1830, adum- 

 brated Agassiz's conclusion which evidently demanded a natural- 

 istic explanation. He speaks of "a series of periods of un- 

 known duration, in which both land and sea teemed with forms 

 of animal and vegetable life, which have successively dis- 

 appeared and given place to others, and these again to new races 

 approximating gradually more and more nearly ' to those which 

 now inhabit them, and at length comprehending species which 

 have their counterparts existing". (Discourse, [316.].) In 1887 

 Grant Allen wrote a propos of this subject: "The species that 

 bear most closely upon the theory of organic evolution are 

 almost all of them quite recent additions to our stock of know- 

 ledge. The gorilla appeared on the scene at the critical moment 

 for The Descent of Man. Just on the stroke when they were 

 most needed, connecting links, both fossil and living, turned 

 up in abundance between fish and amphibians, amphibians and 

 reptiles, reptiles and birds, birds and mammals, and all of these 

 together in a perfect network of curious cross-relationships. 

 Lizards that were almost crows, marsupials that were almost 

 ostriches, insectivores that were almost bats, rodents that were 

 almost monkeys, have come at the very nick of time to prove 

 the truth of descent with modification." (The Fortnightly 

 Review, June, 1887, p. 882.) 1 



In the matter of observation, therefore, the succeeding Con- 

 clusions would offer fatuous suggestions if this Conclusion 

 were not respected. If Darwin's time had been as ignorant of 

 geology and of the other sciences adverted to above, as the 

 times of Erasmus Darwin and of Lamarck were, the subject 

 of the origin of species would have been enveloped in such 

 obscurity that Darwin could have made no sensible progress 

 in unpicking the knot of facts. He would have struggled in 

 vain to develop half-a-dozen intricate sciences to serve as his 

 point of departure, and very likely he would have finished by 

 accomplishing just something in one science or another, never 

 coming even within hailing distance of the solution of the 

 problem he was interested in, and never being regarded as a 

 man of surpassing genius. 



Moreover, in the light of fifty years of post-Darwinism, we 

 can more justly appraise Darwin's contribution. We thus learn 

 of numerous radical criticisms of his theory. It is said that 

 we ought to speak of a struggle for comfort rather than of a 



1 For a further statement of pre-Darwinism, the reader is referred to the 

 author's forthcoming work, The Distinctive Nature of Man, ch. 9. 



