4 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
acceptance and recognition in larger circles. Hence the 
odd contradictions and the strange opinions which may still 
be heard everywhere about Darwinism. This is the reason 
which induces me to make Darwin’s theory, and those further 
doctrines which are connected with it, the subject of these 
pages, which, I hope, will be generally intelligible. I hold 
it to be the duty of naturalists, not merely to meditate upon 
improvements and discoveries in the ‘narrow circle to which 
their speciality confines them, not merely to pore over their 
one study with love and care, but also to seek to make the 
important general results of it fruitful to the mass, and to 
assist in spreading the knowledge of physical science among 
the people. The highest triumph of the human mind, the 
true knowledge of the most general laws of nature, ought 
not to remain the private possession of a privileged class of 
savans, but ought to become the common property of all 
mankind. 
The theory which, through Darwin, has been placed at 
the head of all our knowledge of nature, is usually called the 
Doctrine of Filiation, or the Theory of Descent. Others term 
it the Transmutation Theory. Both designations are correct. 
For this doctrine affirms, that all organisms (viz. all species 
of animals, all species of plants, which have ever existed or 
still exist on the earth) are derwed from one single, or from 
a few simple original forms, and that they have developed 
themselves from these in the natural course of a gradual 
change. Although this theory of development had already 
been brought forward and defended by several great natural- 
ists, and especially by Lamarck and Goethe, in the beginning 
of our century, still it was through Darwin, thirteen years 
ago, that it received its complete demonstration and causal 
