e used in the critical and more exacting spirit
with which we test the outfit for our own enterprise that we learn
their full value and strength. Whether we glance back and compare his
performance with the efforts of his predecessors, or look forward
along the course which modern research is disclosing, we shall honour
most in him not the rounded merit of finite accomplishment, but the
creative power by which he inaugurated a line of discovery endless in
variety and extension. Let us attempt thus to see his work in true
perspective between the past from which it grew, and the present which
is its consequence. Darwin attacked the problem of Evolution by
reference to facts of three classes: Variation; Heredity; Natural
Selection. His work was not as the laity suppose, a sudden and
unheralded revelation, but the first fruit of a long and hitherto
barren controversy. The occurrence of variation from type, and the
hereditary transmission of such variation had of course been long
familiar to practical men, and inferences as to the possible bearing
of those phenomena on the nature of specific difference had been from
time to time drawn by naturalists. Maupertuis, for example, wrote: "Ce
qui nous reste a examiner, c'est comment d'un seul individu, il a pu
naitre tant d'especes si differentes." And again: "La Nature contient
le fonds de toutes ces varietes: mais le hasard ou l'art les mettent
en oeuvre. C'est ainsi que ceux dont l'industrie s'applique a
satisfaire le gout des curieux, sont, pour ainsi dire, createurs
d'especes nouvelles."[56]

Such passages, of which many (though few so emphatic) can be found in
eighteenth century writers, indicate a true perception of the mode of
Evolution. The speculations hinted at by Buffon,[57] developed by
Erasmus Darwin, and independently proclaimed above all by Lamarck,
gave to the doctrine of descent a wide renown. The uniformitarian
teaching which Lyell deduced from geological observation had gained
acceptance. The facts of geographical distribution[58] had been shown
to be obviously inconsistent with the Mosaic legend. Prichard, and
Lawrence, following the example of Blumenbach, had successfully
demonstrated that the races of Man could be regarded as different
forms of one species, contrary to the opinion up till then received.
These treatises all begin, it is true, with a profound obeisance to
the sons of Noah, but that performed, they continue on strictly modern
lines. The question