Such was the simple and inoffensive-looking bombshell which Darwin launched from his quiet home at Down into the very midst of the teleological camp in the peaceful year 1859. Subsequent generations will remember the date as a crisis and turning-point in the history of mankind. [2] The remainder of the present chapter, which consists almost entirely of an exposition of the doctrine of natural selection, may safely be skipped by the reader already well acquainted with the Origin of Species. The abstract is taken for the most part from the latest and fullest enlarged edition, but attention is usually called in passing to the points which did not appear in the first issue of 1859. [3] The researches of Seebohm and others have since proved that this is really the case to a far greater extent than Darwin was aware of in 1859, or, indeed, till many years afterward. CHAPTER VII. THE DARWINIAN REVOLUTION BEGINS. So far as the scientific world was concerned the 'Origin of Species' fell, like a grain of mustard seed, upon good and well-prepared ground; the plant that sprang from it grew up forthwith into a great and stately tree, that overshadowed with its spreading branches all the corners of the earth. The soil, indeed, had been carefully broken for it beforehand: Lamarck and St. Hilaire, Spencer and Chambers, had ploughed and harrowed in all diligence; and the minds of men were thoroughly ready for the assimilation of the new doctrine. But the seed itself, too, was the right germ for the exact moment; it contained within itself the vivifying principle that enabled it to grow and wax exceeding great where kindred germs before had withered away, or had borne but scanty and immature fruit. Two conditions contributed to this result, one external, the other internal.