WHAT WE OWE TO DARWIN 7 



varied, but, from a certain distance, we see that 

 naturalists ask only four questions : What is this 

 living creature ? How does it work ? Whence 

 has it arisen ? How has it come to be as it 

 is ? Darwin asked each of these questions, but, 

 after serving his apprenticeship in answering the 

 first three — for he was anatomist, physiologist, 

 and palaeontologist in turn — he settled down to 

 the fourth — ^the question of questions — How have 

 living creatures come to be as they are ? 



The Question What is This? — The naturalist's 

 first question — however learnedly he may phrase 

 it — ^is one of the child's first questions, asked long 

 before it can speak : " What is this ? " In how 

 many different tones — of fear, of awe, of wonder, 

 of inquisitiveness — has this question been asked 

 since man and science began ! Was it not 

 Aristotle's question when a new specimen was 

 brought to him ? Was it not the question of 

 the naturaHst on the Challenger when the dredge 

 came up ? Is it not the question on the lips of 

 every teacher and student of natural history 

 to-day ? — What is this ? It is a " simple ques- 

 tion," but how hard to answer, as we press it 

 further and further home, from external features 

 to internal structure, from organs to tissues, from 

 tissues to cells, as we put one lens after another in 

 front of our own, as we call to our aid all sorts 

 of devices — scalpel and forceps, razor and micro- 

 tome, fixative and stain! "What is this," we 

 say, " in itself and in all its parts ? what is this by 

 itself and when compared with its fellows and 

 kindred ? ", and our answer broadens and deepens 

 till it furnishes the raw materials of the science of 

 piorphology, 



