THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.* 
By Charles Otis W^iitman. 
Much has been said and written on the subject of the origin 
of species, but tradition was first to claim possession of the secret, 
and to veil it with such unapproachable guile of devination, that 
the world waited until the middle of the nineteenth century for a 
Darwin to vindicate the right of investigation. The many-sided 
problem was at length revealed in 1859. It was a problem to chal- 
lenge at once the most lively interest not only among biological 
investigators, but in every department of science and thought. The 
half century since the appearance of Darwin's great work on the 
''Origin of Species," has effected a more wonderful revolution in 
our modes of thought and investigation than anyone can realize 
who has not lived in close touch with every year's progress. 
The dogma of special creations has exhibited most stubborn 
tenacity, but it has slowly yielded to the principle of progressive 
evolution guided by the operation of natural laws. The violent 
shock experienced by theologists at seeing natural selection set in 
the place of Creative power, the revulsion at the thought of uni- 
versal kinship in the organic world, especially at the doctrine of 
man's descent from lower forms of life — all this lingers only 
as reminiscence, and we now find satisfaction in viewing the 
history of our race as a grand series of ascending stages, and 
take more pride in a rising ancestry than in a fallen one. 
The revolution in sentiment has well-nigh freed us from 
supernaturalism. Investigation has multiplied and intensified at 
an increasingly rapid rate, but the problem of the origin of species 
has not been more than partially solved. In fact, it seems as if 
Darwin and Wallace, NageH, Haeckel, Dohrn, Weismann, 
De Yries and a host of other investigator^, had grappled with an 
all-embracing problem — a problem of problems that must engage 
the best energies of all the sciences for centuries yet to come. 
*Tlie introduction and abstract of a lecture delivered before the 
Wisconsin Natural History Society by Professor Whitman at the meet- 
ing of December 20', 1906. 
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