PDF - Wallace Online

474 TROPICAL NATUREendeavoured, however imperfectly, to enable non- specialiststo judge of the character and extent of this work, and of thevast revolution it has effected in our conception of nature,a revolution altogether independent of the question whetherthe theory of " natural selection " is or is not as important afactor in bringing about changes of animal and vegetableforms as its author maintained. Let us consider for amoment the state of mind induced by the new theory andthat which precededit. So long as men believed that everyspecies was the immediate handiwork of the Creator, and wastherefore absolutely perfect, they remained altogether blindto the meaning of the countless variations and adaptations ofthe parts and organs of plants and animals. They who werealways repeating, parrot-like, that every organism was exactlyadapted to its conditions and surroundings by an all -wisebeing, were apparently dulled or incapacitated by this belieffrom any inquiry into the inner meaning of what they sawaround them, and were content to pass over whole classes offacts as inexplicable, and to ignore countless details of structureunder vague notions of a " general plan," or of variety andbeauty being " ends in themselves " while he whose;teachingswere at first stigmatised as degrading or even atheistical, bydevoting to the varied phenomena of living things the loving,patient, and reverent study of one who really had faith in thebeauty and harmony and perfection of creation, was enabledto bring to light innumerable hidden adaptations, and to provethat the most insignificant parts of the meanest living thingshad a use and a purpose, were worthy of our earnest study,and fitted to excite our highest and most intelligent admiration.That he has done this is the sufficient answer to his criticsand to his few detractors. However much our knowledge ofnature may advance in the future, it will certainly be byfollowing in the pathways he has made clear for us and for;long years to come the name of Darwin will stand for thetypical example of what the student of nature ought to be.And if we glance back over the whole domain of science, weshall find none to stand beside him as equals ;for in him wefind a patient observation and collection of facts, as in TychoBrahe the ; power of using those facts in the determination oflaws, as in Kepler, combined with the inspirational genius of a