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CHARLES DARWIN.

Westminster Abbey receives to-day the mortal remains of one who has fully earned the honour of a cell in the famous resting-place of our national worthies. The name of Charles Darwin in emblazoned on the scanty roll of a few who have added a province to the empire of knowledge or quickened the march of intellect by the infusion of a fresh and fertile idea. His fame is European, and the news of his death brings from every civilised nation a tribute of admiration to lay upon his tomb. France acknowledges in him the worthy heir of Buffon, Lamarck, St. Hiliare, and Cuvier; and Germany pays him her highest compliment by comparing him—less appropriately, for the character of their intellect was extremely different—to the great scientific hero of her race, Alexander von Humboldt. The qualities which have won for him this universal recognition, are fresh in all our memories. They are, perhaps, even more strikingly displayed in the smaller books which have followed each other recently in rapid succession than in the great work which lifted him twenty years ago into sudden fame.

In the history of the Fertilisation of Orchids, in the delicate analysis of the causes which bring about the twisting of Climbing Plants, in the elucidation of the singular contrivances by which the plants that nourish themselves on insects secure and assimilate their prey, and especially in the last volume, which he gave us less than a year ago, on Earthworms, we are constrained to admire the candour which recognises and indicates every weak spot in his argument, the fertile ingenuity which blocks every avenue by which an error can creep in, and the unwearying patience which pursues every experiment through long years to its final issue. These qualities of minute and laborious investigation are indeed so conspicuous as almost to obscure the originality of invention which they are brought to support. Yet in all these instances, as well as in an earlier one—the work on the structure of Coral Reefs, which was published in 1842—there has been a clear enunciation for the first time of fruitful ideas which were destined to govern and direct the investigations of future naturalists. All who are interested in botany know, for instance, how admirably and picturesquely Sir John Lubbock has expanded and illustrated the theory of the fertilisation of plants, and no one would be more willing than himself to admit that the whole conception of his work in this direction was due to the impulse communication by Darwin's original idea.

But all these lesser productions are but supplements and corollaries to the great work on the Origin of Species by Natural Selection, which at once placed him in the first rank of the naturalists of all time. It is a work which has been much misapprehended by many who have thought themselves competent to attack it, but who do not seem to have qualified themselves for the purpose by taking the trouble to read, or, at least, to understand it. It is often represented broadly as a statement of the universal progression from lower to higher forms of life, and the culmination of absurdity is thought to be reached when Darwin is accused of making man the grandson of a monkey. But his real theory is much more subtle and refined. In it the history of life is so far from being a history if universal advance that it presents many instances of degeneration; and the monkey which he places on the line of the ancestry of main is some hitherto undiscovered form, probably very different from any which exists at the present day. The two positions which his book really advocates, and which may be considered as almost universally accepted now by all naturalists of reputation, are first, that species are variable, and secondly, that their variation is brough about by the circumstances under which they are placed. The doctrine which previously prevailed, that all the forms which naturalises have dignified with the name of Species, were separately created at the beginning of the world and have remained ever since what there wer at first, is scarcely now anywhere maintained, though it may still be a question whether there are not limited to the variability which Darwin assumed to be infinite. and it can as little be doubted that "Natural Selection," or the "Survival of the Fittest," is a powerful factor in bringing about this variation. Obviously those forms which are least adapted to the surrounding circumstances, or "environment," will die the soonest or live with diminished vitality, and, therefore, reappear in fewer and fewer numbers in each successive generation, until at length they die out altogether, and leave their more fortunate fellows to represent an altered species., But here again the question arises whether this cause, though plainly able to effect much, is sufficient to account for all; and that it is not equal to sustain this burden alone was admitted by Darwin when, in a subsequent volume—the Descent of Man—he added the principle of "sexual" to that of "natural" selection, in order, chiefly, to explain the problem, extremely difficult on his first theory, of the development of beauty and ornament as well as utility.

It is quite possible that other factors besides—such, for instance, as the principle of as innate formative power in every germ which Professor Mivart advocates, or of a superior selecting Intelligence which Mr. Wallace pleads for in the of man—may have to be introduced to complete the theory; or that definite barriers may be discovered beyond which the variation of species cannot pass. But no additions or modifications of this kind will detract from the merit which belongs to Darwin and which places him on the level of the few great original thinkers of mankind, of having produced an idea which has inspired Biology with a fresh life, and stimulated every branch of the science into renewed and hopeful activity.

[…] Among these that of Canon Liddon at St. Paul's is naturally the most conspicuous. Addressing the vast congregation that filled the dome and overflowed down all the length of the nave in those clear tones which penetrate with such a wonderful power the long lines of distance that stretch away from him, he put this point with extreme clearness.

"The evolutionary process, supposing it to exist, must have had a beginning: who began it? It must have had material to work with: who furnished it: It is itself a law or system of laws: who enacted them?" The inevitable answer to these questions justifies the assertion which Cannon Barry made the same evening in Westminster Abbey, that "the fruitful doctrine of evolution, with which Darwin's name would always be associated, lent itself at least as readily to the old promise of God as to more modern but less complete explanations of the universe." Under the shelter of these eminent authorities we need not qualify our admiration for the high intellectual qualities of the great thinker who has just passed away, by any anxiety about the legitimate result of his speculations, or by any misgivings lest the sacred pavement of the Abbey should cover a secret enemy of the Faith. Let us rather see in the funeral honours paid within those holy precincts to our greatest naturalist, a happy trophy of the reconciliation between Faith and Science.