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.

Under this new influence an army of young men took up every promising line of scientific investigation in every land.
Epoch-making books appeared in all the great nations.