PDF - Wallace Online

ix THE DEBT OF SCIENCE TO DARWIN 455were found to exhibit a progressive advancement fromancient to recent times, while the breaks in the seriesbetween each great geological formation were held to showthat the older forms of life had been destroyed, and werereplaced by a new creation of a more advanced organisationsuited to the altered conditions of the world.And thus, perhaps, we might have gone on to this day,ever accumulating fresh masses of fact, while each set ofworkers became ever more and more occupied in their owndepartments of study, and, for want of any intelligible theoryto connect and harmonise the whole, less and less able toappreciate the labours of their colleagues, had not CharlesDarwin made his memorable voyage round the world, andthenceforth devoted himself, as so many had done before him,to a life of patient research in the domain of organic nature.But how different was the object attained ! Others haveadded greatly to our knowledge of details, or created areputation by some important work he has; given us newconceptions of the world of life, and a theory which is itselfa powerful instrument of research ;has shown us how tocombine into one consistent whole the facts accumulatedby all the separate classes of workers, and has therebyrevolutionised the whole study of nature. Let us endeavourto see by what means he arrived at this vast result.The Voyage of the BEAGLEPassing by the ancestry and early life of Darwin, whichhave been made known to the whole reading public by manybiographical notices and recently by the publication of hisLife and Letters, we may begin with the first event to whichwe can distinctly trace his future greatness his appointmentas naturalist to the Beagle, on the recommendation of hisfriend and natural -history teacher, Professor Henslow, ofCambridge University. It was in 1831, when Darwin, thentwenty-two years of age, had just taken his B.A. degree, thathe left England on his five years' voyage in the SouthernHemisphere. It is probably to this circumstance that theworld owes the greatrevolution in our conception of theorganic world so well known as the Darwinian theory. Theopportunity of studying nature in new and strange lands;