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president’s address. 
predecessor, and that is liis concentration on the simple 
teaching of nature, without allowing himself to he swayed one 
way or the other by preconceived notions and prejudices. The 
light which reaches us from the most distant star is the same 
in its nature as that which our own sun furnishes. Thus, 
true genius in every age, and under the most diverse conditions, 
moves in obedience to the same principles, and often arrives 
at identical results. Again, in more recent times, Lamarck, 
in the first year of the present century, published his profound 
speculations on the Origin of Species, views which were after¬ 
wards adopted and made popular by Chambers in his “ Vestiges 
of Creation.” These and others in their several lines were 
working towards the same end. But, after all, the theories 
they put forth were but speculations; most of them, and 
especially that of Chambers, with the defect that they pre¬ 
supposed successive inscrutable acts of creation ; and it was 
long before even the most candid thinkers, such as Sir Charles 
Lyell, could free themselves from a view that rendered any 
really comprehensive generalisation possible. It was the 
great merit of Darwin to emancipate himself entirely from 
this bondage, and guided, not by the dim, uncertain light of 
hypothesis, or the ingenious speculations of supposed analogies, 
but by the teaching of careful experiment, of long-continued 
and patient observation, aided by a singular candour of mind, 
which was ever ready to listen to and weigh the strongest 
objections which could be urged against his views and to 
admit frankly all that told against them, it was reserved for a 
man who combined an almost childlike simplicity with a most 
powerful intellect to give a new departure to scientific thought, 
and to be the founder of a school which can alone elucidate 
what it is possible for us to know of the mysterious problem of 
life. It will not be expected that I should here attempt to give 
even an outline of the theory with whicl^the name of Darwin 
has been identified, or to apportion the share which his pre¬ 
decessors had in its elaboration ; though I must say, in passing, 
that it would be most unjust, as Mr. Hughes has pointed out 
in his address to the Birmingham Natural History Society, to 
ignore the claims of Mr. Herbert Spencer to having previously 
enunciated the great doctrine of evolution throughout the 
universe. A delightful little volume, recently published by 
Mr. Grant Allen, in Longman’s series of English Worthies, 
places within the reach of any one who may desire it the 
history of the whole subject, as well as a clear exposition of 
Darwin’s views and discoveries. That such an hypothesis as 
this should have met with bitter resistance in many quarters 
is not surprising, considering how opposed it was to pre-existing 
