22 THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 
It has been sometimes said in recent years that Dar- 
winism is dead, and there is a sense in which this is 
true. Unmodified and unassisted natural selection is 
not to-day considered by most scientists a sufficient 
agent for producing evolution. But everyone con- 
nected with the subject acknowledges Darwin as the 
master, and says that it was his work which con- 
verted the world to a belief in evolution. We can 
have no better preparation for an intelligent under- 
standing of this subject than to consider carefully the 
life of this remarkable man and the circumstances 
under which he came to his epoch-making conclusions. 
Evolution has taught us to attempt as far as may 
be to account for man on the basis of his heredity or 
of his environment. It is interesting to note that both 
of these factors in Darwin’s case were entirely favor- 
able. In the latter part of the eighteenth century 
Erasmus Darwin had given to the world an astonish- 
ing poem in which he anticipated not a little of the 
thought which his more famous grandson was to make 
so widely known. Josiah Wedgwood had learned to 
make for England her most famous pottery, no qual- 
ity of which was more widely recognized than the 
sterling patience with which it was made. Erasmus 
Darwin, with his scientific proclivities, and Josiah 
Wedgwood, with his sturdy common sense and pa- 
tient workmanship, united to give Charles Darwin his 
