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Charles Darwin, son of a physician, grandson of Erasmus Darwin, poet and physician, and of Josiah Wedgwood, potter, was born at Shrewsbury, England, Feb. 12, 1809. Studied medicine briefly at Edinburgh, graduated at Cambridge in 1831, intending to take Holy Orders. His real interest, however, was in natural history, and he became naturalist on H. M. S. Beagle, making extensive studies in the southern hemisphere, 1831-1836. Began study of origin of species in 1837, publishing his great work on that subject in 1859, following it with later work on evolution and plant behaviour. He married his cousin Emma Wedgwood in 1839, and lived in semi-retirement at Down in Kent from 1842 to his death on April 19, 1882. He did not originate the idea of organic evolution, but was the first to amass overwhelming evidence in support of it and, with Alfred Russell Wallace, to present convincing arguments for natural selection. His work on the geology of South America alone would have won him permanent distinction in science. His genius lay in his capacity for sustained effort--despite continuing ill-health--and in the open-minded, patient, tentative attitude with which he approached scientific problems. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. His influence in life and thought continues to grow with the years.

Perhaps the honest and hopeful approach is to assume that genius is a matter of process, giving form and expression to whatever, old or new, it works upon. And if we can show that the kind of process which so nobly characterized the work and spirit of Darwin has become integral to our modern civilization, we may rest our case as to his influence. The immediate question then becomes, what was the essential genius of Darwin?

First and foremost Darwin advanced, by example, the right of free inquiry and discussion, so long as it goes hand in hand with a scrupulous examination of the evidence. Second, he advanced the concept of process, not the being, but the becoming. Far and above everything else that Darwin means, these two principles stand forth clear and uncompromising. And because he was working, not on problems of inanimate nature, but on the problem of life itself, his activities have touched the very nerve center of static authority. Since 1859 there has never been any question as to the fundamental issues.

It is of course vastly important that Darwin was the first to make reasonable and convincing a very old idea--that of organic evolution with its emphasis on the kinship and continuity of nature. Others had talked of it, a few had toiled over it. Characteristically, Darwin went hunting for it. The work of his powerful imagination and persistent energy suggests the superbly trained bird dogs which he loved, deliberately and thoroughly exploring the field, step by step, nostrils alert, never breaking, never flinching, never diverted until the last fluttering single had been accounted for.

It is of lesser importance whether Darwin established evolution as a fact--whether he proved it in reality to have occurred. Actually he did not, although his work made the idea finally reasonable. Evolution became at length respectable as a theory and a point of view from which science might proceed to further inquiry.

Least important to us--and this must seem a strange way in which to deal with a mighty concept--is Darwin's particular explanation of the mechanism of evolution. The origin of species by natural selection is most generally and intimately associated with his name, and he would be aggrieved to have it otherwise, we may be certain. This idea is, however, less the essence of the man than an expression of that essence. Though conceivably the theory might collapse, its author would still stand solid and immense, an imposing figure in the human adventure. But we shall probably not have to deal with such a collapse. The operation of natural selection has been demonstrated by critical experiments in the field of genetics to be a potent factor in the organic world.

The immediate effect of Darwin upon science was one of magnificent release. It was not, properly speaking, a stimulus-the vast unexplored world of the unknown was stimulus enough and curiosity was straining to understand it. Darwin cut the leash and the human mind leaped ahead. . .

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