40 DARWINISM AND HUMAN LIFE 



itself like a slow incoming tide in men's minds, 

 and that the scientific spirit had ripened since 

 the days when Cuvier laughed Lamarck out of 

 court, but we must still ask, more personally, how 

 it was that Darwin succeeded so well. There are 

 several answers. 



Because, in the first place, he had clear visions — 

 pensees de la jeunesse, executees par I'dge mur — 

 which a University curriculum had not made 

 impossible, which the Beagle voyage — a Columbus 

 voyage that discovered a new world — had made 

 vivid, which an unrivalled British doggedness 

 made real — visions of the web of life, of the fountain 

 of change within the organism, of the struggle for 

 existence, of discriminate winnowing or selection, 

 and of the spreading genealogical tree. 



Because, in the second place, he put so much 

 grit into the verification of his visions, forcing 

 them to the proof in an argument which is, of 

 its kind — direct demonstration being out of the 

 question — quite unequalled. 



Because, in the third place, he broke down 

 the opposition which the most scientific had felt 

 to the seductive modal formula of evolution, by 

 bringing forward a more plausible theory of the 

 process than had been previously suggested. Nor 

 can one forget, since questions of this magnitude 

 are human and not merely academic, that Darwin 

 wrote, of his condescension, so that all men could 

 understand. 



As Mr. Arthur Balfour recently said : " Charles 

 Darwin's performances have now become part 

 of the common intellectual inheritance of every 

 man of education, wherever he lives or whatever 

 his occupation or trade in Ufe. To him we trace. 



