PREFACE 



In 1908 the Lecture Committee of the South 

 African Association for the Advancement of Science 

 did me the honour of inviting me to give the 

 " South African Lectures " for 1909, and sug- 

 gested that, in view of Darwin's Centenary, the 

 subject of the course should be Darwinism. It 

 was the chief aim of the lectures to explain the 

 gist of Darwinism — ^what problems Darwin set 

 himself to solve, and what solutions he arrived 

 at, and to indicate what progress has been made 

 as regards the problems of Organic Evolution 

 since Darwin's day — what has been added to 

 Darwinism, what, if anything, has been taken 

 away, and, especially, what is now being recon- 

 sidered. An endeavour — necessarily straitened by 

 the limits of the course — ^was also made to suggest 

 how Darwinism touches everyday life, in farm and 

 garden, in city and empire. 



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