Explore "Charles Darwin" by Grant Allen on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
So far as the scientific world was concerned the 'Origin of Species' fell, like a grain of mustard seed, upon good and well-prepared ground; the plant that sprang from it grew up forthwith into a great and stately tree, that overshadowed with its spreading branches all the corners of the earth.
The soil, indeed, had been carefully broken for it beforehand: Lamarck and St. Hilaire, Spencer and Chambers, had ploughed and harrowed in all diligence; and the minds of men were thoroughly ready for the assimilation of the new doctrine. But the seed itself, too, was the right germ for the exact moment; it contained within itself the vivifying principle that enabled it to grow and wax exceeding great where kindred germs before had withered away, or had borne but scanty and immature fruit.