WHAT WE OWE TO DARWIN 39 



" When my notes are published I shall fall infinitely 

 low in the opinion of all sound naturalists ; so this 

 is my prospect for the future." That the time 

 was far from ripe is well shown in a passage in the 

 second volume of Buckle's " History of CiviUsa- 

 tion," which was published two years after " The 

 Origin of Species " : " We are in that predicament 

 that our facts have outstripped our knowledge, 

 and are now encumbering its march. The publica- 

 tions of our scientific institutions, and of our 

 scientific authors, overflow with minute and 

 countless details, which perplex the judgment, 

 and which no memory can retain. In vain do 

 we demand that they should be generalised and 

 reduced into prder. Instead of that, the heap 

 continues to swell. We want ideas, and we get 

 more facts. We hear constantly of what nature 

 is doing, but we rarely hear of what man is thinking. 

 Owing to the indefatigable industry of this and 

 the preceding century, we are in possession of a 

 huge and incoherent mass of observations, which 

 have been stored up with great care, but which, 

 until they are connected by some presiding idea, 

 will be utterly useless." And yet one of the 

 greatest of generalisations, one of the most powerful 

 of presiding ideas, was awaiting Buckle's recogni- 

 tion. It was eminently characteristic of Darwin 

 that the accumulation of facts was to him not 

 an end but a means to an end. 



Particular Keasons for Darwin's Success.— 

 We must grant that the intellectual temper of 

 the time was changing, that in various departments 

 men were becoming familiar with the historical 

 method— the first step to becoming evolutionists, 

 that the genetic view of nature was insinuating 



