Page:Carroll Lane Fenton - A History of Evolution (1922).djvu/9

6 can be given, where they can be given at all. But more important than that is the lack of material. No scientist has been a Shakespeare, to be written about by Goethe and Frank Harris, nor yet a Cromwell, to receive the attention of Carlyle. And yet the personality and fortunes of a scientist are just as important in judging his place in the world as are those of a poet or statesman. Without knowing that Lamarck was poor and blind we cannot properly view his efforts; without realizing that Cuvier was spoiled, wealthy, and of a "ruling class," we cannot understand his bitter contempt for an honest, capable worker who was founding one of the greatest conceptions of all human thought. And so, while we are considering the ideas that go to make up this evolution, let us remember that those ideas were worked out by men, not by erratic, thinking machines which popular magazines proclaim to the world as representations of its scientists.

C. L. F.