What Darwin really said : connected extracts from the "Origin of species", with an introduction by Julian Huxley.

  • Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882.
Date:
1929
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: What Darwin really said : connected extracts from the "Origin of species", with an introduction by Julian Huxley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of Evolution has met with such universal acceptance that it is now taken for granted and has become part of the background of biological thought ; and that though Natural Selection, his suggested explanation of the evolutionary process, still occupies the central place in any discussion of the subject, the advance of knowledge has made it necessary to modify our detailed ideas of how it works. This distinction between the fact and the method of evolution is still more vital for our other question —whether Darwin was anticipated by others. Here the verdict of history is unmistakable. There were others before Darwin who had put forth evolutionary views ; but they had never succeeded in winning over the bulk of scientific opinion, for the reason that their evidence was too scanty, their reasoning at fault, or the explanations of the process which they put forward too unconvincing. In precisely the same way there were many before Dalton who had toyed with the idea of the atomic nature of matter; but it was he who first demon strated it to general satisfaction. So with Darwin. It was he who first convinced his fellow-biologists of the truth of Evolution, of the fact that existing animals and plants could not have been created once and for all in the guise in which they now appear, but must have arisen by slow transformation from simpler forms of life. He ac complished this by a remarkable combined attack on the problem. In the first place, he assembled a far greater array of facts bearing on the question than had ever been done before, and analysed them with