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ix THE DEBT OF SCIENCE TO DARWIN 451authorities rank him far above the greatest names in naturalscience above Linnaeus and Cuvier, the great teachers of apast generation above De Candolle and Agassiz, Owen andHuxley, in our own times. Many must feel inclined to ask,What is the secret of this lofty pre-eminence so freely accordedto a contemporary by his fellow-workers ? What has Darwindone, that even those who most strongly oppose his theoriesrarely suggest that he is overrated ?Why is it universally feltthat the only name with which his can be compared in thewhole domain of science is that of the illustrious Newton ?It will be my endeavour in the present chapter to answerthese questions, however imperfectly, by giving a connectedsketch of the work which Darwin did, the discoveries whichhe made, the new fields of research which he opened up, thenew conceptions of nature which he has given us. Such asketch may help to clear away some of the obscurity whichundoubtedly prevails as to the cause and foundation ofDarwin's pre-eminence.In order to understand the vast and fundamental changeeffected by the publication of Darwin's most importantvolume The Origin of Species we must take a hasty glanceat the progress of the science of natural history during thepreceding century.The Century "before,DarwinAlmost exactly a hundred years before Darwin we findLinnaeus and his numerous disciples hard at work describingand naming all animals and plants then discovered, andclassifying them according to the artificial method of thegreat master, which is still known as the Linnaean System ;and from that time to the present day a large proportion ofnaturalists are fully occupied with this labour of describingnew species and new genera, and in classifying themaccording to the improved and more natural systems whichhave been gradually introduced.But another body of students have always been dissatisfiedwith this superficialmode of studying externalsonly, and have devoted themselves to a minute examinationof the internal structure of animals and plants ;and early inthis century the great Cuvier showed how this knowledge of