by circumstances; in 1853 appeared the tenth and much improved edition of the Vestiges, of which Mr. Darwin says "It has done excellent service in this country in calling attention to the subject, in removing prejudice, and in thus preparing the ground for the reception of analogous views." In the In the same year Count Keyserling and Dr Schaaffhausen, in different countries, argued in favour of the modification of species; and similar views were propounded by other writers in 1854 and 1855.1 How Mr. Darwin's attention was directed to the subject during the voyage of the Beagle has already been stated, but anything which throws light upon the history of his principal work is interesting, and the following extract from a letter to Haeckel, published in his History of Creation, will be welcome.

1

Having reflected much on the foregoing facts, it seemed to me probable that allied species were descended from a common ancestor. But during several years I could not conceive how each form could have been modified so as to become admirably adapted to its place in nature. I began therefore to study domesticated animals and cultivated plants, and after a time perceived that man's power of selecting and breeding from certain individuals was the most powerful of all means in the production of new races. Having attended to the habits of animals and their relations to the surrounding conditions, I was able to realize the severe struggle for existence to which all organisms are subjected; and my geological observations had allowed me to appreciate to a certain extent the duration of past geological periods. With my mind thus prepared I fortunately happened to read Malthus's Essay on Population; and the idea of natural selection through the struggle for existence at once occurred to me. Of all the subordinate points in the theory, the last which I understood was the cause of the tendency in the descendants from a common progenitor to diverge in character.2

In 1858 Mr. Wallace, who was studying the Natural History of the Malay Archipelago, sent a memoir to

1 See "Historical Sketch " prefixed to the Origin of Species, and the Introduction to that work.

2 Re-written from the German text by Mr. Darwin for The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism by Oscar Schmidt.

Mr. Darwin, from which it appeared that these distinguished observers had "arrived at almost exactly the same general conclusions on the Origin of Species.' We quote Mr. Darwin's own words, and he adds—“Sir C. Lyell and Dr. Hooker, who both knew of my work, the latter having read my sketch of 1844, honoured me by thinking it advisable to publish, with Mr. Wallace's excellent memoir, some brief extracts from my manuscripts." Mr. Darwin's recognition of Mr. Wallace's claims found a worthy response in Mr. Wallace's expressions of veneration for the "lofty pre-eminence" of his friend; and the story of their generous rivalry is one of the brightest in the annals of science. When Mr. Darwin died Mr. Wallace wrote a tribute to his memory in which his own share in establishing the doctrine of evolution is ignored, and Mr. Darwin is pronounced to be far above other names in natural science, not only of our own but of all times.

However much our knowledge of nature may advance in the future (says Mr. Wallace), it will certainly be by following in the pathways he has made clear for us, and for long years to come the name of Darwin will stand for the typical example of what the student of nature ought to be. And if we glance back over the whole domain of science we shall find none to stand beside him as equals; for in him we find a patient observation and collection of facts, as in Tycho Brahe; the power of using those facts in the determination of laws, as in Kepler; combined with the inspirational genius of a Newton, through which he was enabled to grasp fundamental principles, and so apply them as to bring order out of chaos, and illuminate the world of life as Newton illuminated the material universe. Paraphrasing the eulogistic words of the poet, we may say with perhaps a greater approximation to truth

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;

God said, 'Let Darwin be,' and all was light.1

It was on the 1st of July, 1858, that the papers by Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace were read before the Linnæan Society; and the Origin of Species2 was pub

1 From the paper in The Century already mentioned.

2 The full title of the work is The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

lished on the 24th of November, 1859, a date never to be forgotten in the history of science. The first edition quickly disappeared, and within six weeks a second was in the hands of the public. The work was translated into almost every continental language, and when the sixth English edition was published in January, 1872, a fifth German edition was in course of preparation, there were four in France, three in Russia, and one in Italy, Holland, and Sweden, as well as three in America. Of vehement denunciation Mr. Darwin's theory came in for its full share. The Quarterly Review received it with mingled denunciation and derision. The reviewer was charmed indeed with Mr. Darwin's revelations of Nature's secrets. "We feel as we walk abroad with Mr. Darwin very much as the favoured object of the attention of the dervise must have felt when he had rubbed the ointment around his eye, and had it opened to see all the jewels, and diamonds, and emeralds, and topazes, and rubies, which were sparkling unregarded beneath the earth, hidden as yet from all eyes save those which the dervise had enlightened." Such a confession as this might well have made the critic doubt whether he was as capable as the dervise of interpreting the secrets which he revealed; but to Mr. Darwin's doctrine no quarter is given. "Under such influences a man soon goes back to the marvelling stare of childhood at the centaurs and hippogriffs of fancy, or, if he is of a philosophic turn, he comes, like Oken, to write a scheme of creation under a 'sort of inspiration,' but it is the frenzied inspiration of the inhaler of mephitic gas. The whole world of nature is laid for such a man under a fantastic law of glamour,and he becomes capable of believing anything; and he is able with a continually growing neglect of all the facts around him, with equal confidence and equal delusion, to look back to any past and to look on to any future." It It may be doubted whether a more ingenious perversion of truth was ever devised than that of charg1 Quarterly Review, Vol. CVIII., p. 230.

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ing Mr. Darwin with a continually growing neglect of all the facts around him"! The Edinburgh Review was not so extravagant in its condemnation, but solemnly warned the members of the Royal Institution, who had listened to a favourable lecture from Professor Huxley on the subject, that such speculations truly paralleled the abuse of science to which a neighbouring nation, some seventy years since, owed its temporary degradation."

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At the Oxford meeting of the British Association in 1860 the book was discussed in a very lively way, in the section of Zoology and Botany, over which Mr. Darwin's old friend, Professor Henslow, presided for the last time. "A large audience," says the writer of Henslow's Life, "was drawn together to hear it; numbers could not get in; and "those who were present speak of the admirable tact and judgment with which he regulated the discussion, showing complete impartiality, allowing everyone fairly to state his opinions, but checking all irrelevant remarks, and trying to keep down as much as possible any acrimonious feelings that appeared to mix themselves up with the arguments of the contending parties." It was Huxley who bore the brunt of the attack, and being asked by one of the disputants whether he was related, on his grandfather's or his grandmother's side, to an ape, replied that if he had his choice of an ancestor, whether it should be an ape, or one who, having received a scholastic education, should use his logic to mislead an untutored public, he should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the ape. The debates lasted a considerable time, and before they were over, "young Lubbock and Joseph Hooker declared their adhesion to Darwin's theory," as Lyell, who was at Oxford, but not able to attend the meetings of this section, writes in a letter to Sir Charles Bunbury. In the same letter he says that the crowded assembly, where Darwin's opponents had been loudly cheered, was at last "quite turned the other way, especially by Hooker."

For awhile Mr. Darwin was the butt of the comic papers and the shallow wits of the age; a thousand pulpits thundered against him with all the force of intense conviction; one of the two great political leaders of the day declared himself" on the side of the angels," against the author of the Origin of Species. Even the Royal Society hesitated to give him its highest reward, the Copley medal, and he only received it in 1864. Happy in the possession of a serene and unselfish spirit, Darwin watched the controversy without sharing in it, except to profit by any useful criticism, and take advantage of any correction for a fresh edition of his work. It was not his own reputation he was careful of, but the interests of truth, and as far as these were served by controversy, Mr. Darwin was glad to have all the light that could be gathered from every quarter shed upon the enquiry in which he was engaged. In a few years the storm abated. Many of the most distinguished leaders of science threw in their lot with Mr. Darwin, including Dr. Hooker amongst botanists, as we have already seen, and Lyell amongst geologists, though he expressed a certain degree of reserve;1 Herbert Spencer carried the battle into the field of psychology; while Professor Huxley, at the head of the biologists, acted, as he himself modestly says, "for some time in the capacity of under-nurse" to thenew offspring of science. Gradually, in the periodical press, derision gave place to respect and admiration; and after a

1 Lyell welcomed the book, however, with great cordiality. "I have just finished your volume (he says), and right glad I am that I did my best with Hooker to persuade you to publish it without waiting for a time which probably could never have arrived, though you lived to the age of a hundred, when you had prepared all your facts on which you ground so many grand generalizations. It is a splendid case of close reasoning and long-sustained arguments throughout so many pages, the condensation immense, too great, perhaps, for the uninitiated, but an effective and important preliminary statement which will admit, even before your detailed proofs appear, of some occasional useful exemplifications, such as your pigeons and cirripedes, of which you make such excellent use."-Life of Sir Charles Lyell, Vol. II., p. 825.