LUTHER BURBANK 



trine of evolution had taken its place as an ac- 

 cepted working hypothesis among men of science, 

 but so revolutionary a doctrine could not be ex- 

 pected to make its way with the general public in 

 less than a generation, and it is probable that, if 

 we could accurately gauge what might be called 

 the intellectual atmosphere, we should find that 

 it was as fully charged in the year 1893 with doubts 

 as to the truth of the Darwinian doctrine as it had 

 been thirty years earlier. 



At the earlier period, indeed, the man in the 

 street had known but little of the character and 

 implications of the doctrines involved. He per- 

 haps had heard that "Darwin thinks men de- 

 scended from monkeys", and with a few of the 

 conventional and obvious jokes associated with 

 that idea, the matter, so far as he was concerned, 

 for the most part ended. 



But by the closing decade of the nineteenth 

 century, after the bitter controversies of the men 

 of science and the theologist had been fought out, 

 a fuller recognition of the true implications of the 

 doctrine of evolution began to permeate the lower 

 strata of mental life of the generation, and 

 thoughtful minds everywhere were eagerly ques- 

 tioning as to what might be the full truth and the 

 final status of the evolutionary doctrine. 



Into this atmosphere of inquiry and doubt and 



[168] 



