Life of Charles DarwinBettany, G. T. (George Thomas)
Science
Life of Charles Darwin
Bettany, G. T. (George Thomas)
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882
Darwin imagined grandly, and verified his imaginings as far as one man's
life suffices; and no man can do more. And Darwin won, as far as a man
can win, success during his lifetime. As Professor Huxley said, in
lecturing on "The Coming of Age of 'The Origin of Species,'" "the
foremost men of science in every country are either avowed champions of
its leading doctrines, or at any rate abstain from opposing them." His
prescience has in less than a generation been justified by the discovery
of intermediate fossil forms of animals too numerous to be here
recounted. The break between vertebrate and invertebrate animals,
between flowering and non-flowering plants, between animal and plant, is
now bridged over by discoveries in the life histories of animals and
plants which exist to-day. Embryo animals and plants are now known to go
through stages which repeat and condense the upward ascent of life; and
they give us information of the greatest value as to lost stages in the
path. We can, as it were, see the actual track through which evolution
may have proceeded. "Thus," says Professor Huxley, "if the doctrine of
evolution had not existed, palæontologists must have invented it, so
irresistibly is it forced upon the mind by the study of the remains of
the Tertiary mammalia which have been brought to light since 1859;" and
again, "so far as the animal world is concerned, evolution is no longer
a speculation, but a statement of historical fact."
As to the limits of the truth of Darwin's theory, Professor Huxley,
writing on "Evolution in Biology," in "The Encyclopædia Britannica,"
says: "How far natural selection suffices for the production of species
remains to be seen. Few can doubt that, if not the whole cause, it is a
very important factor in that operation; and that it must play a great
part in the sorting out of varieties into those which are transitory,
and those which are permanent. But the causes and conditions of
variation have yet to be thoroughly explored; and the importance of
natural selection will not be impaired, even if further inquiries should
prove that variability is definite, and is determined in certain
directions rather than in others, by conditions inherent in that which
varies."
We have not space to describe the importance of the work Darwin did in,
or bearing on, entomology, changing its face and vastly elevating its
importance. A volume might be compiled from his writings on this
subject, as reference to Professor Riley's excellent summary (Darwin
Memorial Meeting, Washington, 1882) will readily show. Nor can we
recount his important work in other branches of biology further than has
been already done in the foregoing pages. To do so would require much
more than a volume of this size.
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