Page - 6 - in The Origin of Species

6 INTRODUCTORY NOTE arrived at entirely independently. On the advice of Lyell, the geologist, and Hooker, the botanist, Wallace's paper and a letter of Darivin's of the previous year, in ivhich he had outlined his theory to Asa Gray, zvere read together on July I, 1858, and published by the Linncean Society. In November of the follow- ing year "The Origin of Species" was published, and the great battle was begun between the old science and the new. This work was followed in 1868 by his "Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," that in turn by the "Descent of Man" in i8yi, and that again by "The Expression of the Emo- tions in Man and Animals." Each of these books was the elabo- ration or complement of a section of its predecessor. The later years of Darwin's life were chieAy devoted to botanical research, and resulted in a series of treatises of the highest scientific value. He died atDown on April ig, 1882, and is buried in Westminster Abbey. The idea of the evolution of organisms, so far from originating with Darwin, is a very old one. Glimpses of it appear in the ancient Greek philosophers, especially Empedocles and Aristotle; modern philosophy from Bacon onward shows an increasing definiteness in its grasp of the conception; and in the age pre- ceding Darivin's, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck had given it a fairly concrete expression. As we approach the date of the publication of "The Origin of Species" adherence to the doctrine not only by naturalists but by poets, such as Goethe, becomes comparatively frequent; and in the six years before the joint announcement of Darwin and Wallace, Herbert Spencer had been supporting and applying it vigorously in the field of psychology. To these partial anticipations, however, Darwin oiued little. When he became interested in the problem, the doctrine of the fixity of species was still generally held; and his solution occurred to him mainly as the result of his own observation and thinking. Speaking of the voyage of the "Beagle," he says, "On my return home in the autumn of 1836 I immediately began to prepare my journal for publication, and then saw how many facts indicated the common descent of species. ... In July (1837) I opened my first note-book for facts in relation to the Origin of Species, about which I had long reflected, and never ceased working for the next twenty years. . . . Had been greatly struck from about