It were platitude to say that Mr.
Darwin was not only an almost unrivalled student of nature, as careful
and conscientious in his methods, as fearless in stating his results,
but--pace Mr. Carlyle--a man of genius, who has thrown Hoods of light on
the inter-relations of the organic world. But there are whole troops
of serfs, "addicti jururo in verba magistri," who, accepting, without
attempt or capacity to verify the conclusions of the master mind, think
to solve all the mysteries of the universe by ejaculating the word
"Evolution." If I ask what was the secret of Dante's or of Shakespeare's
divining rod, and you answer "Evolution," 'tis as if, when sick in heart
and sick in head, I were referred, as medicine for "a mind diseased," to
Grimm's Law or to the Magnetic Belt.
Let us grant that Caesar was evolved from the currents in the air about
the Roman Capitol, that Marcus Aurelius was a blend of Plato and
Cleanthes, Charlemagne a graft of Frankish blood on Gallic soil, William
I. a rill from Rollo filtered in Neustrian fields, Hildebrand a flame
from the altar of the mediaeval church, Barbarossa a plant grown to
masterdom in German woods, or later--not to heap up figures whose
memories still possess the world--that Columbus was a Genoan breeze,
Bacon a _rechauffe_ of Elizabethan thought, Orange the Silent a Dutch
dyke, Chatham the frontispiece of eighteenth-century England, or Corsican
Buonaparte the "armed soldier of Democracy.
Pages:
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27