June i, 1882] 



NA TURE 



99 



discovery of some cause which could be reasonably re- 

 garded as not incommensurate with some of the effects 

 ascribed to it. And, unlike the desperate though most 

 laudable gropings of Lamarck, the simple solution fur- 

 nished by Darwin was precisely what was required to 

 give a locus sta?idi to the evidence of descent. 



But we should form a very inadequate estimate of the 

 services rendered to science by Mr. Darwin if we were 

 to stop here. The few general facts out of which the 

 theory of evolution by natural selection is formed — viz. 

 struggle for existence, survival of the fittest, and heredity 

 — were all previously well-known facts ; and we may not 

 unreasonably feel astonished that so apparently obvious 

 a combination of them as that which occurred to Mr. 

 Darwin should have occurred to no one else, with the 

 single exception of Mr. Wallace. The fact that it did not 

 do so is most fortunate in two respects — first, because it 

 gave Mr. Darwin the opportunity of pondering upon the 

 subject ab initio, and next because it gave the world an 

 opportunity of witnessing the disinterested unselfishness 

 which has been so signally and so consistently displayed 

 by both these English naturalists. But the greatness of 

 Mr. Darwin as the reformer of biology is not to be esti- 

 mated by the fact that he conceived the idea of natural 

 selection ; his claim to everlasting memory rests upon 

 the many years of devoted labour whereby he tested this 

 idea in all conceivable ways — amassing facts from every 

 department of science, balancing evidence with the 

 soundest judgment, shirking no difficulty, and at last 

 astonishing the world as with a revelation by publishing 

 the completed proof of evolution. Indeed, so colossal is 

 Mr. Darwin's greatness in this respect, that we doubt 

 whether there ever was a man so well fitted to undertake 

 the work which he has so successfully accomplished. 

 For this work required not merely vast and varied know- 

 ledge of many provinces of science, and the very excep- 

 tional powers of judgment which Mr. Darwin possessed, 

 but also the patience to labour for many years at a great 

 generalisation, the honest candour which rendered the 

 author his own best critic, and last, though perhaps not 

 least, the magnanimous simplicity of character which, in 

 rising above all petty and personal feelings, delivered a 

 thought-reversing doctrine to mankind, with as little dis- 

 turbance as possible of the deeply-rooted sentiments of 

 the age. In the chapter of accidents, therefore, it is a 

 singularly fortunate coincidence that Mr. Darwin was the 

 man to whom the idea of natural selection occurred ; for 

 although in a generation or two the truth of evolution might 

 have become more and more forced upon the belief of 

 science, and with it the acceptance of natural selection as 

 an operating cause, in our own generation this could only- 

 have been accomplished in the way that it was accom- 

 plished ; we required one such exceptional mind as that 

 of Darwin to focus the facts, and to show the method. 



It seems almost needless to turn from this aspect of 

 our subject to enlarge upon the influence which a general 

 acceptance of the theory of descent has had upon biology. 

 We do not state the case too strongly when we say that 

 this has been the influence which has created organisation 

 out of confusion, brought the dry bones to life, and made 

 all the pteviously dissociated facts of science stand up as 

 an exceeding great army. Let any one turn to the eloquent 

 prophecy with which the pages of the " Origin of Species " 



terminate — a prophecy which sets forth in order the trans- 

 forming effect that the doctrine of evolution would in 

 the future exert upon every department of biology— and 

 he may rejoice to think that Mr. Darwin himself lived to 

 see every word of that prophecy fulfilled. For where is now 

 the"systematist . . . incessantly haunted by the shadowy- 

 doubt whether this or that form be a true species"? 

 And has it not proved true that "the other and more 

 general departments of natural history will rise greatly in 

 interest — that the terms used by naturalists, of affinity, 

 relationship, community of type, paternity, morphology, 

 adaptive characters, rudimentary and aborted organs, 

 &c, will cease to be metaphorical, and will have a 

 plain signification ? " Do we not indeed begin to feel that 

 "we no longer look at an organic being as a savage looks 

 at a ship, as something wholly beyond his comprehen- 

 sion ; and when we regard every production of nature as 

 one which has had a long history, when we contemplate 

 every complete structure and instinct as the summing up 

 of many contrivances, each useful to the possessor, in the 

 same way as any great mechanical invention is the 

 summing up of the labour, the experience, the reason, and 

 even the blunders of numerous workmen, when we thus 

 view each organic being," may we not now all say with 

 Darwin, "How far more interesting — I speak from ex- 

 perience — does the study of natural history become ? " 

 And may we not now all see that " a grand and almost 

 untrodden field of inquiry on the laws of variation, on 

 correlation, on the effects of use and disuse, on the direct 

 action of external conditions " has been opened up ; that 

 our classifications, have become " as far as they can be 

 made so, genealogies, and truly give what may be called a 

 place of creation ; " that rules of classifying do " become 

 simpler when we have a definite object in view;" and 

 that "aberrant species, which may fancifully be called 

 living fossils," actually are of service in supplying "a- 

 picture of ancient forms of life ? " And again, must we 

 not agree that " when we can feel assured that all the 

 individuals of the same species and all the closely-allied 

 species of most genera, have, within a not very remote 

 period, descended from one parent, and have migrated 

 from some one birth-place ; and when we better know the 

 many means of migration, then, by the light which 

 geology now throws, and will continue to throw, on 

 former changes of climate and of the level of the land, we 

 shall surely be able to trace in an admirable manner 

 the former migrations of the inhabitants of the whole 

 world?" And who is now able to question that " by com- 

 paring the differences between the inhabitants of the sea 

 on the opposite sides of a continent, and of the various 

 inhabitants on that continent in relation to their apparent 

 means of migration, some light can be thrown on ancient 

 geography ? " Or, if we turn to " the noble science of 

 geology," do we not see that we are beginning " to gauge 

 with some security the duration of intervals by a com- 

 parison of the preceding and succeeding forms of life ? '' 

 And last, though not least, have we not found this one 

 short sentence so charged with meaning that a new and 

 extensive science, second in importance to none, may be 

 almost said to have grown out of what it states : — " Em- 

 bryology will often reveal to us the structure, in some 

 degree obscured, of the prototypes?'" 



If the progress of science during the last two-and- 



