1909.] CONKLIN— THE WORLD'S DEBT TO DARWIN. xxxix 



Without doubt the greatest scientific generaHzation of the past 

 century is the theory of organic evolution. The only other which 

 can be compared with it, the doctrine of the conservation of energy, 

 has not so profoundly influenced human life nor so greatly changed 

 all the currents of human thought. Evolution has not only trans- 

 formed biology, psychology, sociology, anthropology and geology, 

 but it has given a new point of view to all science, art, and even 

 religion. " The great theory of evolution," said John Fiske, " is 

 rapidly causing us to modify our opinions on all subjects what- 

 soever." 



Though many forerunners of this theory may be found in former 

 centuries, its establishment upon a scientific basis belongs to the 

 nineteenth century. How general the feeling is that evolution is 

 the greatest scientific principle of modern times, and how al 'Dst 

 universally its establishment is identified with a single man • ; i 

 single book, is shown by the remarkable symposium which app '. 

 in one of our magazines a few years ago.^ Ten men, selectee 

 their eminence in literature and education, were asked to give their 

 opinions as to the most influential books of the nineteenth century. 

 No one of these men was by training or profession a biologist, with 

 the exception of one psychologist no one of them was especially 

 identified with any natural science, and yet the only book of the 

 century upon which all ten agreed was Darwin's " Origin of 

 Species." 



The doctrine of descent is so wholly in accord with the facts 

 of biology, and indeed of al! sciences ; it is so reasonable and simple 

 that one can scarcely believe that it had few adherents until after 

 the middle of the last century. Yet the evolutionary speculations 

 of the " Naturphilosophen," and even the more scientific hypotheses 

 of Buffon, Lamarck and St. Hilaire in the first quarter of the cen- 

 tury produced, on the whole, an unfavorable impression upon 

 naturalists, and up to the year 1859 the problem of the origin of 

 species, their relationships to one another, their geographical and 

 geological distribution, was regarded as the " mystery of mysteries," 



^ Outlook, December i, 1900. 



