WillUms : Darwin and Daewinism. 



persons liave looked into it sufficiently to compreliend just what it 

 means, and how much it implies. I propose, therefore, to state, as 

 plainly as T can, just the particular thing which Mr. Darwin did, just 

 what he contributed to the world. 



The question that Darwin tried to answer is the same question that 

 has always presented itself to the curiosity of man. For we must 

 suppose that, however far back th^ period may have been when man 

 first stood up conscious of himself as a personality — conscious of the 

 fact that there was a wondrous world around him of which he was an 

 inhabitant, — one of the first questions that would present itself to him 

 must have been, Where did I come from ? Who made these lights in 

 this sky above me ? By what process has the world come to be what 

 it is 1 It is the same question exactly that every child, treading in the 

 steps of a countless line of ancestors, is ready to ask of father and 

 mother: Who made the tree, the dog, the cat? Who made the sun 

 and moon in the heavens? Who made me ? It is the oldest question 

 of the world ; and, until Darwin's time, nothing approaching a clear 

 and rational and authoritative answer had been given. 



We look on the face of the world, and we know that very marked 

 changes have been going on. We have records of the past by which 

 we know that now there are mountain chains where once they did 

 not exist. We know that what are now islands — our own England^ 

 for instance— were once connected with the mainland ; that the shape 

 of continents has changed ; that rivers have shifted their beds. We 

 know that once, ages ago, other kinds of flowers, other kinds of trees 

 and plants, grew where now present species and families and orders 

 are holding their places. We know that, if we go far enough back, 

 there was a time when man was not here — when the highest kind of 

 life that was lived belonged to a lower order or type. It is inevitable, 

 then, that until it can be answered, the one great question that men shall 

 ask will be — Where did I come from ? How did I come ? By what 

 power, and through what process, has this wonderful world been made 

 as it is to-day ? 



I said that, before Darwin's, no adequate answer had been given. 

 Consider for a moment what I mean. The only theory that had 

 ever been heard by the questioning heart of man was that which is 

 termed the special creation theory." But, in the true significance of 

 words, that is no theory at all. For what do we mean by a theory ? 

 A theory is a scheme of thought that attempts to account for cert^xin 

 facts. A theory must be built on facts. When we speak of creation, 

 where are the facts ? Did any human being, from the beginning of 



