Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/27

Rh and thought of another man of genius fifty years before. The book of Malthus on the Principle of Population, mainly founded on the fact that animals increase in a geometrical ratio, and therefore, unchecked, must encumber the earth, had been generally forgotten, and was only recalled to remembrance now and then with a sneer. But the genius of Darwin recognized in it a deeper meaning, and now the thought of Malthus was joined to the new current. Meditating upon it in connection with his own observations of the luxuriance of Nature, Darwin arrived at his doctrine of natural selection and survival of the fittest.

As the great dogmatic barrier between the old and new views of the universe was broken down, the flood of new thought pouring over the world stimulated and nourished strong growths in every field of research and reasoning; edition after edition of the book was called for; it was translated even into Japanese and Hindustani; the stagnation of scientific thought, which Buckle only a few years before had so deeply lamented, gave place to a widespread and fruitful activity; masses of accumulated observations, which had seemed stale and unprofitable, were made alive; facts formerly without meaning now found their interpretation. Under this new influence a vast army of young men took up every line of scientific investigation in every land. Epoch-making books appeared in all the great nations. Spencer, Wallace, Huxley, Galton, Tyndall, Tylor, Lubbock, Bagehot, Lewes, in England, and a phalanx of strong men in Germany, Italy, France, and America gave forth works which became authoritative in every department of biology. If some of the older men in France held back, overawed perhaps by the authority of Cuvier, the younger and more vigorous pressed on.

One source of opposition in America deserves to be especially mentioned—Louis Agassiz.

A great investigator, an inspired and inspiring teacher, a noble man, he had received and elaborated a theory of animated creation which he could not readily change. In his heart and mind still prevailed the atmosphere of the little Swiss parsonage in which he was born, and his religious and moral nature, so beautiful to all who knew him, was especially repelled by sundry evolutionists, who, in their zeal as neophytes, made proclamations having a decidedly irreligious if not immoral bearing. In addition to this was the direction his thinking had received from Cuvier; both these influences combined to prevent his acceptance of the new view.

He was the third great man who had thrown his influence as a barrier across the current of evolutionary thought. Linnæus in the second half of the eighteenth century, Cuvier in the first half and Agassiz in the second half of the nineteenth—all made