1882.] Charles Darwin : a Farewell Offering. 327 
us matter, not inert but active, and brought us nearer to the 
insight into its atomic constitution. The philosophic bear- 
ings of these onward steps do not need to be traced in detail. 
A new horizon was opened out to man, and the entire cur- 
rent of his thoughts was bound to undergo a change in as 
far as the teachings of the great astronomer were understood 
and assimilated by the people. That for this good service 
Newton was denounced almost as warmly and as roundly as 
Darwin need surprise no one. 
Charles Darwin undertook a task more difficult from a 
threefold point of view : the subjedt-matter with which he 
had to grapple was in itself far more complicated and mani- 
fold ; it was in a much more crude and imperfedt state ; and 
it was more subject to the interference of human passion 
and prejudice. It is not too much to say that — despite what 
had been done by Buffon, by Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin, 
St. Hilaire, and Oken — zoology, botany, and palaeontology 
scarcely existed as sciences. The great men just mentioned 
had given indications of value, and had pointed towards the 
truth, but the world refused to listen, or heard merely to 
ridicule. The hour was not yet come, and the evidence 
collected was not sufficient. In the received text-books of 
natural history — the writings of Linnaeus, Goldsmith, Cuvier, 
and the like — we found descriptions, indeed, of species, 
genera, and families, arranged in groups more or less un- 
natural. But if we asked why certain forms were present 
in one country, and not in another possessing an identical 
climate ; if we wished to know whether extindt species 
should be introduced into surviving genera ; or, in short, if 
we raised any of the thousand questions which every Science 
must answer if it seeks to make good its character as a body 
of corredl, systematised knowledge, our teachers shook their 
heads and called us “ narrische Jungen.” If devout, they 
referred all these points to the inscrutable will of God : if 
sceptical, they accounted for everything as the outcome of 
“ chance,” and showed a plain dislike to such questioning.* 
But even “ narrische Jungen ” and “ coquins curieux ” could 
feel that a body of learning which merely appealed to the 
memory was no Science. 
As to the prejudices of the public, they were such as the 
rising generation can scarcely comprehend. Men were wil- 
ling to admit that in the movements of the planets — as in 
the fall, the motions, and the encounters of bodies upon the 
earth’s surface — there was nothing mysterious, unaccount- 
* Let no one think that I here allude to Oken, 
