The great discoveries which astronomy and geology have made during the nineteenth century, and which are of extreme importance to our whole system, are, nevertheless, far surpassed by those of biology. Indeed, we may say that the greater part of the many branches which this comprehensive science of organic life has recently produced have seen the light in the course of the present century. As we saw in the first section, during the century all branches of anatomy and physiology, botany and zoology, ontogeny and phylogeny, have been so marvellously enriched by countless discoveries that the present condition of biological science is immeasurably superior to its condition a hundred years ago. That applies first of all _quantitatively_ to the colossal growth of our positive information in all those provinces and their several parts. But it applies with even greater force _qualitatively_ to the deepening of our comprehension of biological phenomena, and our knowledge of their efficient causes. In this Charles Darwin (1859) takes the palm of victory; by his theory of selection he has solved the great problem of "organic creation," of the natural origin of the countless forms of life by gradual transformation. It is true that Lamarck had recognized fifty years earlier that the mode of this transformation lay in the reciprocal action of heredity and adaptation. However, Lamarck was hampered by his lack of the principle of selection, and of that deeper insight into the true nature of organization which was only rendered possible after the founding of the theory of evolution and the cellular theory. When we collated the results of these and other disciplines, and found the key to their harmonious interpretation in the ancestral development of living beings, we succeeded in establishing the monistic biology, the principles of which I have endeavored to lay down securely in my _General Morphology_. V.--PROGRESS OF ANTHROPOLOGY