1893 - 94 .] Dr Munro on Rise and Progress of Anthropology. 219 
species of plants and animals now extant, and being continued by 
the ordinary laws of generation, had been derived from pre-existing 
forms by secondary causes — a process which he designated under 
the name of Natural Selection. The key to this theory is to be 
found in the severe struggle for existence which all organisms have 
to maintain, not only against their natural enemies, but against 
the overcrowding of their own species. The outcome of a contest 
under conditions where it is only possible for a limited number to 
find the means of subsistence, is the survival of the fittest and the 
extinction of the weakest. In this manner Mr Darwin traced the 
origin of Man through a series of intermediate forms back to proto- 
plasm, without the intervention of repeated cataclysms and special 
creative dramas, as was generally held by the earlier geologists. 
“ As all the living forms of life,” says Mr Darwin, “ are the lineal 
descendants of those which lived long before the Cambrian epoch, 
we may feel certain that the ordinary succession of generation has 
never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the 
whole world” {Origin of Species, p. 428). 
Like all great discoveries, the grandeur of Mr Darwin’s concep- 
tion lay in the simplicity and transparency of its truth ; and as a 
small particle leavens the mass, so the words “ struggle for exist- 
ence” and ‘‘survival of the fittest ’’set the whole philosophical 
world into a ferment. Indeed, it is impossible to exaggerate the 
profound effect produced on his fellow-men by the doctrine 
thus taught by Mr Darwin. Many of the greatest naturalists of 
the day at once discarded their former creeds and adopted the evo- 
lution theory of life ; and at the present time it may be well asked 
who and where are its opponents ? Evolution was then by no means 
a new idea, but hitherto no naturalist had formulated a modus 
operandi of its laws. Lamarck believed in the development of the 
higher animals, but he adduced no evidence in support of his belief 
beyond the vaguest hypothesis. On the other hand, Cuvier, who 
had the amplest evidence daily before his eyes, was so blinded by 
his preconceived notions, that he failed to take advantage of the 
strange palaeontological materials among which he worked. 
Foremost among the galaxy of eminent men who took part in the 
exciting controversies which the “ Origin of Species ” gave rise to 
was the celebrated geologist, Sir Charles Lyell, whose work on the 
