DARWINISM AND MALTHAUS. pes 
No apology is needed for coupling the two names. These 
two great men have acknowledged their obligations to each 
other with that noble chivairy w hich has so often distinguished 
men of science. The pursuit of knowledge, the love of truth 
for its own sake, have done more than make us acquainted 
with the material world. In them also are learned some of the 
highest moral qualities, pre-eminently justice and generosity. 
Other names have been mentioned as having in some degree 
anticipated the discoveries of Darwin and Wallace, but they 
have done so only to a very limited extent. No one has been 
more often mentioned and referred to in this connection, in the 
numerous lectures, magazine articles, and essays, that have 
been called forth by the centenary of Darwin than Lamarck ; 
and yet his contribution has been very insignificant. The only 
credit that can be claimed for Lamarck, is that he believed in 
the possibility of the transformation and provress of species : 
but he did nothing to explain how this was accomplished. 
The principal cause he suegested for such transformation and 
development was a “formative nisus,” but of this no trace has 
been found in nature, nor has it in any way helped forward the 
theory of evolution. This explanation was derived not from 
observation but from imagination. It is true that the habit of 
the bottle-nosed whale, of laying his nose upon a rock when 
sunning himself, has been quoted as indicating an aspiration for 
terrestrial existence. This suggestion has at least the merit, 
rare in scientific work, of being amusing. 
One name which has been very seldom mentioned, and 
would seem to be almost of purpose ignored, is that which 
stands at the head of this article, namely, that of Malthus. 
His “Essay on Population” was really the living seed from 
which all that is imphed in the word Darwinism has sprung. 
Falling on the fertile minds of Darwin and of Wallace, there it 
germinated and produced a rich and noble harvest. It was 
Malthus’s “ Essay on Population” that gave them both the clue 
to unravel the difficulties of the Origin of Species. The now 
familiar ideas of the strugyle for existence, survival of the 
fittest, natural selection, evolution and development, and all 
that they imply are engermed in the thought of the Pressure 
of Population on the means of Subsistence, of which Malthus’s 
essay 1s an expansion though in a very different direction. To 
anyone acquainted with that book, and the writings of Darwin 
and Wallace, the connection is very obvious. It has been very 
fully acknowledged by these distinguished philosophers them- 
selves. In his Ori gin of Species, Darwin states in the 
