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Charles Darwin.

(From the London "Daily News," April 21.)

Contemporary science in England boasts one indisputably great man, and we have lost him. Mr. Darwin's name may be ranked without fear with the names of the most famous philosophers. His place, it is almost, impossible to doubt, must, be where Newton and Kepler are, with Aristotle and Copernicus. Perhaps no student since man first began to speculate on the world which surrounds him ever attained ideas so far in advance of what had been deemed true, and saw these ideas find acceptance with his contemporaries. Mr. Darwin was fortunate in the period of his birth. Had it been possible, for a philosopher to arrive by his steps at his conclusions in any period more remote than the last 200 years, he would have had but two courses before him. He might have held his peace, or he might have accepted the fate of Bruno and Vanini, not to say of Campanelli. But Mr. Darwin lived at a time when, for good or evil "a man may say the thing he will." Mr. Darwin was in other ways fortunate in the period of his birth. He was sure of a hearing, and at worst; had to dread no persecutors worse than Bunyan's decrepit Giant Pope, who could but grin, swear, and put him in the Index. He came, too, at a time when the immense patience required tor truly scientific studies was beginning to be understood. The lesson has been learned slowly — the lesson that we must not jump to speculative conclusions without evidence for every link in the chain off reasoning. Even now there are conjectural speculators even within the camp of evolution. Still the secrets of method were beginning to be understood when Mr. Darwin first set to work at the great problem of the Origin of Species. His example, in the construction of his work on that topic, has been fertile in every field of research. Even if Mr. Darwin had not made his point, his method, his patient unwearied accumulation and arrangement of details, all tending to prove the existence of certain universal laws, would have been an invaluable piece of instruction for all speculative minds. Mr. Darwin was thus born into an age which was already aware of the value of method, and he, above all men our age, illustrated and made conspicuous the merit of patience and caution. Had he done no more than this he would have deserved eternal gratitude, but he did much more. He proved, at least within limits beyond which only conjecture exists, the presence of certain constant laws of evolution. The knowledge and acceptance of these laws have revolutionised science. Mr. Darwin busied himself with studying the life and natural growth of plants and animals, but the laws which he showed to prevail in that life also govern human activities. The slow processes of development can be traced at work in the thought and mind of man in his religion, his politics, his morals, his society. Beginning with a nebulous state of confusion, in which, among undeveloped men, politics are scarcely to be distinguished from religion, and religion is almost the same as science, and all the objects in the world are regarded as practically the equals and kinsfolk of man himself, we arrive, by a series of differentiations at modern society, with its manifold well-marked definitions and divisions. Thus philosophy, with its old theories of innate ideas and parental memories, is becoming nothing more than the history of man as determined by the laws of evolution. We no longer "move about in worlds not realised" since Mr. Darwin completed his task. Socrates bade the philosopher "learn some charm to still the child within us". Mr. Darwin has taught us the charm, and it proves to be no "mystic chain of verse," but the application of reason, of organised common sense, to the facts of the world.

Darwin's great opportunity came to him when he was young, when in 1831 he made part of the scientific crew of the Beagle, and explored nature in many quarters of the world. In these voyages his chief ideas probably came to him; but he refused to speculate on what Bacon (himself a most conjectural philosopher) would have called an insufficient collection of instances. He worked at accumulating and reflecting on facts for five years before he allowed himself the luxury of deliberate speculation. We say of "deliberate speculation," because a man cannot but have at least glimmerings of an architectonic idea in his mind, if he is to know at all clearly what sort of facts and relations of facts to each other deserve his attention. Curiously enough (though, after all this sort of coincidence is not rare), Mr. Alfred Wallace had been at work, far away in the Malay Archipelago, on the same tracks as Mr. Darwin. The latter had collected more facts, had systematised his notions more completely; altogether his theory was more fully equipped and ready to face the world and its opponents than the theory of Mr. Wallace. But Mr. Wallace, too, was on the right path, and was travelling in the right spirit not by the mere will o' the wisp light of ingenious conjecture. It is a strange thing, and infinitely to the credit of both these distinguished men, that they had none of the usual quarrels about priority of idea. Each recognised the other's merit, and the place which he and his involuntary rival hold in the establishment of the theory of evolution. Indeed Mr. Darwin's character was a noble one, and free from the jealousies common among people of science, art, letters. He was incapable of malevolence. He was scarcely capable of even momentary anger at the grossest calumny and misrepresentation. He never aimed at cheap, popular successes. He did not even lecture on science made easy; he provided no philosophic pap for the devourers of magazines and primers. His health never recovered the tribulations suffered. during the voyage of the Beagle, and Mr. Darwin had, to husband his strength. He showed, himself little in public; he was not found at lectures, nor on platforms. He built no flimsy house of bricks for one generation, but a lasting mansion of reasoned truth.

Mr. Darwin's speculation in the end led him to the conclusion that man is derived from lower animal forms. There has never been an age or country, perhaps, except in the ages of faith in Europe, when men did not hold this idea in the rough. The red men of America tell how at first we all had tails, and wore them off by sitting on them — a thing they greatly regret. They also, invert the evolutionist theory of the horse's hoof; which, it seems, is really the representative of a commonplace set of toes. The red men, on the other hand, say we started with a solid hand and developed five fingers. The Ojibbeways say Adam and Eve were covered with scales. These dropped off, leaving but 20—the finger nails and toe nails. Australians, Africans, Americans, all trace their origin, as a matter of course, to various beasts, birds, and fishes. Sometimes the process of evolution is described, sometimes it is said, as by the Peruvians and Aryans of India, that the Gods made men not adapted to their environment, and were obliged to place experimental type after experimental type of human beings on earth till they hit on the present model, which was in harmony with surrounding conditions. As to the civilised "shots" at evolution, they are many, from the time of Empedocles to that of Lord Monboddo, from Lord Monboddo to Vestiges of Creation, and the theory of the young lady in Lord Beaconsfield's novel, "we were fishes, and we are to be crows." But all these were conjectures founded on scattered analogies, and not careful about demonstrating the existence of various grades, and processes of development. It was Mr. Darwin's colossal task to work out the idea in reasoned detail. He was attacked, of course, by opponents fair and unfair, and with weapons legitimate and illegitimate. Even now it is not necessary to go with him to his extreme conclusions. Evolution may be a true cause without being the sole cause. But the acceptance of Darwin's doctrine is in nowise inconsistent with strong religious faith and hope, and in any case man is concerned, not with fears and dreams, but with the attainment of such truth as is within the reach of his reason.