Page:The Last link.djvu/15

Rh was accepted with enthusiasm by Charles's grandfather Erasmus. There is no doubt that of all the celebrated naturalists of the nineteenth century Darwin achieved the greatest success, and we should be justified in designating the last forty years as the Age of Darwin.

In searching for the causes of this unexampled success, we must clearly separate three sets of considerations: first, the comprehensive reform of Lamarck's transformism, and its firm establishment by the many arguments drawn from modern biology; secondly, the construction of the new theory of selection, as established by Darwin, and independently by Alfred Wallace (a theory called Darwinism in the proper sense); thirdly, the deduction of anthropogeny, that most important conclusion of the theory of descent, the value of which far surpasses all the other truths in evolution.

It is the third point of Darwin's theory that I shall discuss here; and I shall discuss