These facts were presented with such minute research,
wide observation, patient collation, transparent honesty, and
judicial fairness, that they at once commanded the world's
attention. It was the outcome of thirty years' work and thought by
a worker and thinker of genius, but it was yet more than that--it
was the outcome, also, of the work 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, if unchecked, must encumber the
earth, had been generally forgotten, and was only recalled with a
sneer. But the genius of Darwin recognised 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 had 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.
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