Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 74.djvu/319



OLUMBIA UNIVERSITY is celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Darwin, the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the "Origin of Species." In the year 1809 many illustrious men were born, among them Darwin and Lincoln, one hundred years ago to-day, February 12. So widely different in their lives, Darwin and Lincoln were jet alike in simplicity of character and of language, in love of truth, in abhorrence of slavery, and especially in unconsciousness of their power. Both were at a loss to understand their influence over other men. "I am nothing and truth is everything," once wrote Lincoln. In concluding his autobiography Darwin wrote:

Lincoln's greatest single act was his death blow to slavery. Man had been fighting for centuries for his freedom, in labor, in government, in religion, and in mind. It is certainly notable that the final victory for bodily liberty was won during the "very years which