made in the last half century, but
largely to the luminous example of the great investigators who have
applied themselves to the problem, with so much assiduity and genius,
for a century and a quarter--I mean Goethe and Lamarck, Gegenbaur and
Huxley, but, above all, Charles Darwin. It was the great genius of
Darwin that first brought together that symmetrical temple of
scientific knowledge, the theory of descent. It was Darwin who put the
crown on the edifice by his theory of natural selection. Not until
this broad inductive law was firmly established was it possible to
vindicate the special conclusion, the descent of man from a series of
other Vertebrates. By his illuminating discovery Darwin did more for
anthropology than thousands of those writers, who are more
specifically titled anthropologists, have done by their technical
treatises. We may, indeed, say that it is not merely as an exact
observer and ingenious experimenter, but as a distinguished
anthropologist and far-seeing thinker, that Darwin takes his place
among the greatest men of science of the nineteenth century.

To appreciate fully the immortal merit of Darwin in connection with
anthropology, we must remember that not only did his chief work, _The
Origin of Species_, which opened up a new era in natural history in
1859, sustain the most virulent and widespread opposition for a
lengthy period, but even thirty years later, when its principles were
generally recognised and adopted, the application of them to man was
energetically contested by many high scientific authorities. Even
Alfred Russel Wallace, who discovered the principle of natural
selection independently in 1858, did not concede that it was
applicable to the higher mental and moral qualities of man. Dr.
Wallace still holds a spiritualist and dualist view of the nature of
man, contending that he is composed of a material frame (descended
from the apes) and an immortal immaterial soul (infused by a higher
power). This dual conception, moreover, is still predominant in the
wide circles of modern theology and metaphysics, and has the general
and influential adherence of the more conservative classes of society.

In strict contradiction to this mystical dualism, which is generally
connected with teleology and vitalism, Darwin always maintained the
complete unity of human nature, and showed convincingly that the
psychological side of man was developed, in the same way as the body,
from the less adva