2 INTRODUCTION 



and by the inertia overcome than by the positive 

 momentum it generates. In the first decades of 

 the great Darwinian movement in biology, the 

 tribute of our members may not have been want- 

 ing in demonstrations of the force of old adhe- 

 sions, but even then, whether by resistance or by 

 cooperation, we gave our testimony to the new 

 power that made itself felt in the scientific world. 

 A Uttle later we paid the tribute of conviction — 

 the general tribute of willing conviction, on the 

 part of some of us, and the even more significant 

 tribute of reluctant conviction, on the part of 

 others ; but, in one way or another, we paid a uni- 

 versal tribute. 



If we of the older school permit ourselves to be 

 reminiscent, the tides of thought and feeling of 

 the early days of the half century we celebrate 

 easily surge back into consciousness. We readily 

 recall the stirrings in the biological field when the 

 great question of derivation of species arose into 

 a concrete and, as it seemed to some, a threaten- 

 ing form. But it was not among us as biolo- 

 gists, but among us as members of a proud race, 

 that emotion was deepest stirred. It was in the 

 humanistic atmosphere that protests were most 

 vibrant, for man — scientific man not excepted — • 

 is first of all a creature who takes thought of him- 

 self. His anthropic pride, fostered by tradi- 

 tional assumptions of separateness and eminent 

 superiority — assimiptions pecuUar to no race, 

 nation, or religion, but the common inheritance 



