38 DARWINISM AND HUMAN LIFE 



must take account of the development of philo- 

 sophical thought — for instance in Herder, Kant, 

 and Hegel ; we should also, if we are wise enough, 

 consider social changes. In short, we must abandon 

 the idea that we can understand a great step 

 like the acceptance of the evolutionist outlook 

 without getting beyond the individual prophet, 

 without associating his work with contemporary 

 evolution in other departments of activity. The 

 man and the moment must agree, and, as Professor 

 R. M. Wenley says in this very connection, " genius 

 rarely achieves supremacy without the co-operant 

 * social mind.' " 



There is a risk of attaching too much importance 

 to the force of individual effort on the one hand, 

 and to the ripening of public opinion on the other. 

 The storm of opposition roused by the publication 

 of " The Origin of Species " shows how far the 

 time was from being ripe. To say, as Samuel 

 Butler said, " Buffon planted, Erasmus Darwin and 

 Lamarck watered, but it was Mr. Darwin who 

 said ' That fruit is ripe ' and shook it into his 

 lap," seems to us as wilful a perversion of historical 

 fact as that other statement by the same ingenious 

 and often well-advised critic, " Darwin was heir to 

 a discredited truth, and left behind him an ac- 

 credited fallacy." Much more accurate is Huxley's 

 fine pronouncement ^ : " None have fought better, 

 and none have been more fortimate, than Charles 

 Darwin. He found a great truth trodden underfoot, 

 reviled by bigots, and ridiculed by all the world ; he 

 lived long enough to see it, chiefly by his own efforts, 

 irrefragably established in science." That the time 

 was far from ripe is shown by Darwin's foreboding : 



• " Darwiniana," p. 247. 



