The Presidential Address. 77
appearance," says Lyell,11 "it gave, as Professor Huxley
truly said, 'a new direction to biological speculation,' for
even where it failed to make proselytes, it gave a shock to
old and time-honoured opinions, from which they have never
since recovered. It effected this not merely by the manner
in which it explained how new races and species might be
formed by Natural Selection, but also by showing that, if we
assume the principle, much light is thrown ou many very
distinct and otherwise unconnected classes of phenomena,
both in the present condition and past history of the organic
world." In the year 1869, at a meeting of the German
"Naturforscher Versammlung," a society analogous to our
British Association, Prof. Helmholtz—of world-wide fame as
mathematician, physicist, chemist, and physiologist—in his
opening address at Innsbruck, in reviewing the doctrine of
Natural Selection, said, "Darwin's theory contains an
essentially new creative thought,"12 a dictum which is all the
more weighty as coming from one who has himself obtained
such a many-sided and profound insight into Nature's laws.
But tempting as is this theme, time compels me to refrain
from any further reference to contemporary scientific
opinions on the Darwinian theory. It will suffice to say, in
the words of its illustrious author,—"Now things are wholly
changed, and almost every naturalist admits the great
principle of evolution."13 On the very last occasion that I
had the pleasure of an interview with Mr. Darwin, he said
that he looked upon the 'Origin' as a book of the past; it
had done its work, and might now be shelved. But here, as
in many other cases, his inborn modesty led him to under-
value his own work, and I feel confident that I express the
views of every worker in biology when I say that for many
years hence the 'Origin of Species' will be at hand as a
repository of carefully digested facts, and a storehouse of
suggestions for future work.
Now the theory of species established by Darwin is
11 'Principles of Geology,' 12th ed., vol. ii., pp. 281, 2S2.
12 'Popular Scientific Lectures,' 1873, p. 385.
13 'Origin,' 6th ed., p. 424.