doubt that at the end of his life Mr. Darwin believed modification to be mainly due to function, but the passage quoted on page 46 written in 1839, coupled with the concluding paragraph of the Origin of Species written in 1859, and allowed to stand during seventeen years of revision, though so much else was altered-these passages, when their dates and surroundings are considered, suggest strongly that Mr. Darwin thought during all the forty years or so thus covered exactly as his grandfather and Lamarck had done, and indeed as all sensible people since Buffon wrote have done if they have accepted evolution at all.

Then why should he not have said so? What object could he have in writing an elaborate work to support a theory which he knew all the time to be untenable? The impropriety of such a course, unless the work was, like Buffon's, transparently ironical, could only be matched by its fatuousness, or indeed by the folly of one who should assign action so motiveless to any one out of a lunatic asylum.

This sounds well, but unfortunately we cannot forget that when Mr. Darwin wrote the Origin of Species he claimed to be the originator of the theory of descent with modification generally; that he did this without one word of reference either to Buffon or Erasmus Darwin until the first six thousand copies of his book had been sold, and then with as meagre, inadequate notice as can be well conceived. Lamarck was just named in the first editions of the Origin of Species, but only to be told that Mr. Darwin had not got anything to give him, and he must go away; the author of the Vestiges of Creation was also just mentioned, but only in a sentence full of such gross misrepresentation that Mr. Darwin did not venture to stand by it, and expunged it in later editions, as usual, without calling attention to what he had done. It would have been in the highest degree imprudent, not to say impossible, for one so conscientious as Mr. Darwin to have taken the line he took in respect of descent with modification generally, if he were not provided with some ostensibly distinctive feature, in virtue of which,

if people said anything, he might claim to have advanced something different, and widely different, from the theory of evolution propounded by his illustrious predecessors; a distinctive theory of some sort, therefore, had got to be looked for-and if people look in this spirit they can generally find. I imagine that Mr. Darwin, casting about for a substantial difference, and being unable to find one, committed the Gladstonian blunder of mistaking an unsubstantial for a substantial one. It was doubtless because he suspected it that he never took us fully into his confidence, nor in all probability allowed even to himself how deeply he distrusted it. Much, however, as he disliked the accumulation of accidental variations, he disliked not claiming the theory of descent with modification still more; and if he was to claim this, accidental his variations had got to be. Accidental they accordingly were, but in as obscure and perfunctory a fashion as Mr. Darwin could make them consistently with their being to hand as accidental variations should later developments make this convenient. Under these circumStances it was hardly to be expected that Mr. Darwin should help the reader to follow the workings of his mind-nor, again, that a book the writer of which was hampered as I have supposed should prove clear and easy reading.

The attitude of Mr. Darwin's mind, whatever it may have been in regard to the theory of descent with modification generally, goes so far to explain his attitude in respect to the theory of natural selection (which, it cannot be too often repeated, is only one of the conditions of existence advanced as the main means of modification by the earlier evolutionists), that it is worth while to settle the question once for all whether Mr. Darwin did or did not believe himself justified in claiming the theory of descent as an original discovery of his own. This will be a task of some little length, and may perhaps try the reader's patience, as it assuredly tried mine; if, however, he will read the two following chapters, he will probably be able to make up his mind upon much that will otherwise, if he thinks about it at all, continue to puzzle him.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: DARWIN'S CLAIM TO DESCENT WITH

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MODIFICATION

R. ALLEN, IN HIS CHARLES DARWIN,1 says that "in the public mind Mr. Darwin is commonly regarded as the discoverer and founder of the evolution hypothesis," and on p. 177 he says that to most men Darwinism and evolution mean one and the same thing. Mr. Allen declares misconception on this matter to be "so extremely general" as to be "almost universal"; this is more true than creditable to Mr. Darwin.

Mr. Allen says that though Mr. Darwin gained "far wider general acceptance" for both the doctrine of descent in general, and for that of the descent of man from a simious or semi-simious ancestor in particular, "he laid no sort of claim to originality or proprietorship in either theory." This is not the case. No one can claim a theory more frequently and more effectually than Mr. Darwin claimed descent with modification, nor, as I have already said, is it likely that the misconception of which Mr. Allen complains would be general, if he had not so claimed it. The Origin of Species begins: When on board H.M.S. Beagle, as naturalist, I was much Struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relation of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of speciesthat mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers. On my return home it occurred to me, in 1837, that something might perhaps be made out on this question by patiently accumulating and reflecting upon all sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it. After five years' work I allowed myself to speculate upon the subject, and drew up some short notes; these I enlarged in 1844 into a sketch of the conclusions which then seemed to me probable. From that period to the present day I have steadily pursued the same object. I hope I may be excused

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It should be remembered that this was the year in which the Vestiges of Creation appeared.

these personal details, as I give them to show that I have not been hasty in coming to a decision."

This is bland, but peremptory. Mr. Darwin implies that the mere asking of the question how species has come about opened up a field into which speculation itself had hardly yet ventured to intrude. It was the mystery of mysteries; one of our greatest philosophers had said so; not one little feeble ray of light, had ever yet been thrown upon it. Mr. Darwin knew all this, and was appalled at the greatness of the task that lay before him; still, after he had pondered on what he had seen in South America, it really did occur to him, that if he was very very patient, and went on reflecting for years and years longer, upon all sorts of facts, good, bad, and indifferent, which could possibly have any bearing on the subject-and what fact might not possibly have some bearing?-well, something, as against the nothing that had been made out hitherto, might by some faint far-away possibility be one day dimly seen. It was only what he had seen in South America that made all this occur to him. He had never seen anything about descent with modification in any book, nor heard any one talk about it as having been put forward by other people; if he had, he would, of course, have been the first to say so; he was not as other philosophers are; so the mountain went on for years and years gestating, but still there was no labour.

"My work," continues Mr. Darwin, "is now nearly finished; but as it will take me two or three years to complete it, and as my health is far from strong, I have been urged to publish this abstract. I have been more especially induced to do this, as Mr. Wallace, who is now studying the natural history of the Malay Archipelago, has arrived at almost exactly the same general conclusions that I have on the origin of species." Mr. Darwin was naturally anxious to forestall Mr. Wallace, and hurried up with his book. What reader, on finding descent with modification to be its most prominent feature, could doubt-especially if new to the subject, as the greater number of Mr. Darwin's readers in

1859 were-that this same descent with modification was the theory which Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace had jointly hit upon, and which Mr. Darwin was so anxious to show that he had not been hasty in adopting? When Mr. Darwin went on to say that his abstract would be very imperfect, and that he could not give references and authorities for his several statements, we did not suppose that such an apology could be meant to cover silence concerning writers who during their whole lives, or nearly so, had borne the burden and heat of the day in respect of descent with modification in its most extended application. "I much regret," says Mr. Darwin, "that want of space prevents my having the satisfaction of acknowledging the generous assistance I have received from very many naturalists, some of them personally unknown to me." This is like what the Royal Academicians say when they do not intend to hang our pictures; they can, however, generally find space for a picture if they want to hang it, and we assume with safety that there are no masterworks by painters of the very highest rank for which no space has been available. Want of space will, indeed, prevent my quoting from more than one other paragraph of Mr. Darwin's introduction; this paragraph, however, should alone suffice to show how inaccurate Mr. Allen is in saying that Mr. Darwin "laid no sort of claim to originality or proprietorship "in the theory of descent with modification, and this is the point with which we are immediately concerned. Mr. Darwin says:

"In considering the origin of species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings, on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution, geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the conclusion that each species had not been independently created, but had descended like varieties from other species."

It will be observed that not only is no hint given here that descent with modification was a theory which, though unknown to the general public, had been occupying the atten