1909.] FULLERTON— DARWIN AND MENTAL SCIENCES. xxxvii 



to be assigned to it? Why not trust to the future readjustment 

 which history teaches us to expect? Incidentally, it seems right to 

 call attention to the fact that we live in our own age, and not in 

 another; that the religious aspirations and the ethics of our age 

 are the ones which practically concern us, and must guide our lives. 

 The very doctrine of the evolution of man should teach us to be 

 conservative as well as progressive ; to realize that growth does 

 not take place by a series of explosions; to see that our inheritance 

 from the past and our actual environment cannot be regarded as 

 without significance for human life. This is a practical matter upon 

 which, in such a paper, I touch with due apologies. 



Now that I am at the end of my paper, I think it is not out of 

 place that I should make a personal confession of a natural human 

 weakness ; a weakness which will, I believe, be shared with me by 

 many of those who are present. It is this : I dwell with the more 

 pleasure upon the great and beneficent influence of Darwin, in that 

 it is impossible to become acquainted with the life and character 

 of this wonderful man, gifted in intellect, modest, open-minded, 

 passionately sincere, free from envy and uncharitableness, a model 

 for those who devote themselves to the investigation of truth, with- 

 out being inspired with an affectionate admiration, and without 

 feeling a certain joy in the fact that, after the long and bitter con- 

 flict precipitated by his ideas, the mists of misconception should 

 have been cleared away, and his genius should meet with the gener- 

 ous recognition which is its due. 



