716 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



In either case the same benefits and the same evils flow out of the system. 

 Great cumulative force and power are attained, and a high average degree of ex- 

 cellence and success results. At the same time the process may not be exactly 

 adapted to every individual voter or pupil. The objection is that by such ma- 

 chine management the important elements of individual judgment 'and self-reli- 

 ance are left out of the question. It is a system of forced results rather than of 

 independent action. But it is not alone in politics and education that we find 

 the machine at work. It pervades every branch of business, and may naturally 

 be looked for in mental processes also. Professor Bain, in speaking of the early 

 history of the English universities, refers to " the fatal sterility of the middle ages 

 and of our first and second university periods, which had to do with the mistake 

 of gagging men's mouths and dictating all their conclusions. Things came to 

 be so arranged that contradictory views ran side by side, like opposing electric 

 currents, the thick wrappage of ingenious phraseology arresting the destructive 

 discharge." Though we must repudiate " sterility " as a factor in our day and 

 in our institutions, yet we may do well to examine our processes of thought and 

 investigation and see if we are not tending, in some respects at least, to a similar 

 position in scientific matters. 



Many illustrations, pointing suggestively to this tendency, might be furnish- 

 ed ; but one, which is exceedingly prominent, will suffice for this occasion. 



The year 1882 will long be remembered as one of unusual mortality among 

 distinguished literary and scientific men. We were, within its brief compass, 

 called upon to mourn the loss, successively, of such men as Darwin, Draper, 

 Emerson, Marsh, Longfellow, Pusey, and others almost equally eminent in their 

 different lines of labor and usefulness. Of all these, however, probably none left 

 so many admirers or so lasting a fame, certainly none made so marked an im- 

 pression upon the thought of his generation, as Charles Darwin. 



When he died, last April, the naturalists, the philosophers and the theolo- 

 gians of both hemispheres united spontaneously and almost involuntarily in ren- 

 dering tributes to his memory. All awarded him, unhesitatingly, the character of 

 a fair-minded and careful investigator, a scrupulously honest and faithful recorder 

 of intelligently observed facts, and a conscientious and logical generalizer. To him 

 more than to any other student of nature of the present century is science indebt- 

 ed for a reasonable and probable theory of the origin and descent of species, and 

 upon his head was poured a larger share of criticism, opposition, even personal 

 ridicule, than has fallen to the lot of any other writer during the same period of 

 time. On the other hand, no other writer has ever received from his followers 

 and during his lifetime, so large a meed of praise as the constructor of a theory 

 of development which, it is claimed, has within less than twenty five years "re- 

 formed science and constrained the whole perception, thought and volition of 

 mankind into newer and higher courses." 



Darwin's theory was not altogether new, for it had been broached many 

 years before by Lamarck in his " Philosophie Zoologique." In fact, Aristotle,, 

 himself, suggested it more than 2,000 years ago, while quite a number of com- 



