174 Luck, or Cunning ? 
years I could not conceive how each form could have been 
modified so as to become admirably adapted to its place 
in nature. I began, therefore, to study domesticated 
animals and cultivated plants, and after a time perceived 
that man’s power of selecting and breeding from certain 
individuals was the most powerful of all means in the pro- 
duction of new races. Having attended to the habits of 
animals and their relations to the surrounding conditions, I 
was able to realise the severe struggle for existence to which 
all organisms are subjected, and my geological observations 
had allowed me to appreciate to a certain extent the 
duration of past geological periods. Therefore, when I 
happened to read Malthus on population, the idea of 
natural selection flashed on me. Of all minor points, the 
last which I appreciated was the importance and cause of 
the principle of divergence.” 
This is all very naive, and accords perfectly with the 
introductory paragraphs of the “ Origin of Species ;” 
it gives us the same picture of a solitary thinker, a poor, 
lonely, friendless student of nature, who had never so much 
as heard of Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, or Lamarck. Unfor- 
tunately, however, we cannot forget the description of the 
influences which, according to Mr. Grant Allen, did in 
reality surround Mr. Darwin’s youth, and certainly they 
are more what we should have expected than those suggested 
rather than expressly stated by Mr. Darwin. “ Everywhere 
around him,” says Mr. Allen,* “‘ in his childhood and youth 
these great but formless’’ (why “‘ formless” ?) ‘‘ evolution- 
ary ideas were brewing and fermenting. The scientific 
society of his elders and of the contemporaries among 
whom he grew up was permeated with the leaven of Laplace 
and Lamarck, of Hutton and of Herschel. Inquiry was 
especially everywhere rife as to the origin and nature of 
specific distinctions among plants and animals. Those who 
believed in the doctrine of Buffon and of the ‘ Zoonomia,’ 
* Page 17, 
