THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 5 



years in stocking his arsenal with ample stores of tested and assorted fact. 

 Having won territory with The Origin of Species, he immediately set to 

 work to consolidate his gains by the publication in 1868 of another book, 

 The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication — a great and 

 valuable treasury of biological observation. Having thus established an 

 advanced base, he moved forwards on his final objective — the problem 

 of Human Beginnings — by the publication of The Descent of Man (1871), 

 and that citadel capitulated to him. To make victory doubly certain 

 he issued in the following year — 1872 — The Expression of the Emotions in 

 Man and Animals. Many a soldier of truth had attempted this citadel 

 before Darwin's day, but they failed because they had neither his general- 

 ship nor his artillery. 



Will Darwin's victory endure for all time ? Before attempting to 

 answer this question, let us look at what kind of book The Descent of Man 



is. It is a book of history — the history of Man, written in a 

 History as . _ 



written new way — the way discovered by Charles Darwin. Permit 



by arwin. mg ^ ju ustrate t ^ e Darwinian way of writing history. If 

 a history of the modern bicycle had to be written in the orthodox way, 

 then we should search dated records until every stage was found which 

 linked the two-wheeled hobby-horse, bestrode by tall-hatted fashionable 

 men at the beginning of the nineteenth century, to the modern ' jeopardy ' 

 which now flashes past us in country lanes. But suppose there were no 

 dated records — only a jumble of antiquated machines stored in the 

 cellar of a museum. We should, in this case, have to adopt Darwin's way of 

 writing history. By an exact and systematic comparison of one machine 

 with another we could infer the relationship of one to another and tell 

 the order of their appearance, but as to the date at which each type 

 appeared and the length of time it remained in fashion, we could say 

 very little. It was by adopting this circumstantial method that Darwin 

 succeeded in writing the history of Man. He gathered historical docu- 

 ments from the body and behaviour of Man and compared them with 

 observations made on the body and behaviour of every animal which 

 showed the least resemblance to Man. He studied all that was known 

 in his day of Man's embryological history and noted resemblances and 

 differences in the corresponding histories of other animals. He took into 

 consideration the manner in which the living tissues of Man react to disease, 

 to drugs, and to environment ; he had to account for the existence of 

 diverse races of mankind. By a logical analysis of his facts Darwin 

 reconstructed and wrote a history of Man. 



