INTRODUCTION 5 



tionary conception had found place in the thought 

 of not a few philosophic inquirers, not the least 

 among whom was one of his own lineage ; but yet 

 it was Charles Darwin, more than any other, who 

 gave definiteness and concreteness, who gave 

 method and spirit, to the doctrine of derivation, 

 and who thus became parental to the great move- 

 ment in a sense equaled by no other. Such ac- 

 ceptances of evolutionary conceptions as had much 

 currency before his day, or had much tangible 

 influence on research, were cosmogonic rather 

 than biologic. Beyond doubt these pioneer 

 gropings in the less biased fields prepared the 

 way for his great contribution, but they did not 

 equally encounter the central obstacle that lay in 

 inherited adhesions and traditional preposses- 

 sions, and they did not, therefore, and could not, 

 equally revolutionize the spirit and the attitude 

 of the thinking world by touching with trans- 

 forming power the mainspring of bias. 



But if Darwin found some measure of prep- 

 aration for his work in the labors of predecessors 

 in his own and other fields, he more than amply 

 repaid the debt. The stimulative influence of 

 Darwinism on fundamental conceptions in the 

 celestial and terrestrial kingdoms followed close 

 on those in the biological realm. Both terrestrial 

 and celestial history are even now in the flux of 

 reinterpretation. The sources of this revision of 

 view are indeed various, but a profound Dar- 

 winian influence is felt in it all. It wjould have 



