PDF - Wallace Online

IXTHE DEBT OF SCIENCE TO DARWIN 1The Century before Darwin The Voyage of the Beagle The Journal ofResearches Studies of Domestic Animals Studies of Cultivated andWild Plants Researches on the Cowslip, Primrose, and LoosestrifeThe Struggle for Existence Geographical Distribution and Dispersalof Organisms The Descent of Man and Later Works Estimateof Darwin's Life-Work.THE great man recently taken from, us had achieved anamount of reputation and honour perhaps never beforeaccorded to a contemporary writer on science. His namehas given a new word to several languages, and his genius isacknowledged wherever civilisation ex'tends. Yet .the verygreatness of his fame, together with the number, variety, andscientific importance of his works, has caused him to bealtogether misapprehended by the bulk of the reading public.Every book of Darwin's has been reviewed or noticed inalmost every newspaper and periodical, while his theorieshave been the subject of so much criticism and so muchdispute, that most educated persons have been able to obtainsome general notion of his teachings, often without havingread a single chapter of his works, and very few, indeed,except professed students of science, have read the wholeseries of them. It has been so easy to learn something ofthe Darwinian theory at second-hand that few have caredto study it as expounded byits author.It thus happens that, while Darwin's name and fame aremore widely known than in the case of any other modernman of science, the real character and importance of thework he did are as widely misunderstood. The best scientific1 This article appeared in the Century Magazine of January 1883.