IX 
THE DEBT OF SCIENCE TO DARWIN? 
The Century before Darwin—The Voyage of the Beagle—The Journal of 
Researches—Studies of Domestic Animals—Studies of Cultivated and 
Wild Plants—Researches on the Cowslip, Primrose, and Loosestrife 
—The Struggle for Existence—Geographical Distribution and Dis- 
persal of Organisms—The Descent of Man and Later Works—Estimate 
of Darwin's Life-Work. 
THE great man recently taken from us had achieved an 
amount of reputation and honour perhaps fever before 
accorded to a contemporary writer on science. His name 
has given a new word to several languages, and his genius is 
acknowledged wherever civilisation extends. Yet the very 
greatness of his fame, together with the number, variety, and 
scientific importance of his works, has caused him to be 
altogether misapprehended by the bulk of the reading public. 
Every book of Darwin’s has been reviewed or noticed in 
almost every newspaper and periodical, while his theories 
have been the subject of so much criticism and so much 
dispute, that most educated persons have been able to obtain 
some general notion of his teachings, often without having 
read a single chapter of his works,—and very few, indeed, 
except professed students of science, have read the whole 
series of them. It has been so easy to learn something of 
the Darwinian theory at second-hand that few have cared 
to study it as expounded by its author. 
It thus happens that, while Darwin’s name and fame are 
more widely known than in the case of any other modern 
man of science, the real character and importance of the 
work he did are as widely misunderstood. The best scientific 
1 This article appeared in the Century Magazine of January 1888. 
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