put into his mouth above, he should have said more, and would ere long have been compelled to have explained to us wherein the difference between himself and his predecessors precisely lay, and this would not have been easy. Indeed, if Mr. Darwin had been quite open with us he would have had to say much as follows:

"I should point out that, according to the evolutionists of the last century, improvement in the eye, as in any other organ, is mainly due to persistent, rational, employment of the organ in question, in such slightly modified manner as experience and changed surroundings may suggest. You will have observed that, according to my system, this goes for very little, and that the accumulation of fortunate accidents, irrespectively of the use that may be made of them, is by far the most important means of modification. Put more briefly still, the distinction between me and my predecessors lies in this;-my predecessors thought they knew the main normal cause or principle that underlies variation, whereas I think that there is no general principle underlying it at all, or that even if there is, we know hardly anything about it. This is my distinctive feature; there is no deception; I shall not consider the arguments of my predecessors, nor show in what respect they are insufficient; in fact, I shall say nothing whatever about them. Please to understand that I alone am in possession of the master key that can unlock the bars of the future progress of evolutionary science; so great an improvement, in fact, is my discovery that it justifies me in claiming the theory of descent generally, and I accordingly claim it. If you ask me in what my discovery consists, I reply in this;-that the variations which we are all agreed accumulate are caused-by variation.' I admit that this is not telling you much about them, but it is as much as I think proper to say at present; above all things, let me caution you against thinking that there is any principle of general application underlying variation."

1

This would have been right. This is what Mr. Darwin See Evolution, Old and New, pp. 8, 9 [Shrewsbury Edition, pp. 7, 8].

would have had to have said if he had been frank with us; it is not surprising, therefore, that he should have been less frank than might have been wished. I have no doubt that many a time between 1859 and 1882, the year of his death, Mr. Darwin bitterly regretted his initial error, and would have been only too thankful to repair it, but he could only put the difference between himself and the early evolutionists clearly before his readers at the cost of seeing his own system come tumbling down like a pack of cards; this was more than he could stand, so he buried his face, ostrich-like, in the sand. I know no more pitiable figure in either literature or science.

As I write these lines (July 1886) I see a paragraph in Nature which I take it is intended to convey the impression that Mr. Francis Darwin's Life and Letters of his father will appear shortly. I can form no idea whether Mr. F. Darwin's forthcoming work is likely to appear before this present volume; still less can I conjecture what it may or may not contain; but I can give the reader a criterion by which to test the good faith with which it is written. If Mr. F. Darwin puts the distinctive feature that differentiates Mr. C. Darwin from his predecessors clearly before his readers, enabling them to seize and carry it away with them once for all-if he shows no desire to shirk this question, but, on the contrary, faces it and throws light upon it, then we shall know that his work is sincere, whatever its shortcomings may be in other respects; and when people are doing their best to help us and make us understand all that they understand themselves, a great deal may be forgiven them. If, on the other hand, we find much talk about the wonderful light which Mr. Charles Darwin threw on evolution by his theory of natural selection, without any adequate attempt to make us understand the difference between the natural selection, say, of Mr. Patrick Matthew, and that of his more famous successor, then we may know that we are being trifled with; and that an attempt is being again made to throw dust in our eyes.

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN: MR. GRANT ALLEN'S CHARLES DARWIN ”

T IS HERE THAT MR. GRANT ALLEN'S BOOK fails. It is impossible to believe it written in good faith, with no end in view, save to make something easy which might otherwise be found difficult; on the contrary, it leaves the impression of having been written with a desire to hinder us, as far as possible, from understanding things that Mr. Allen himself understood perfectly well.

After saying that "in the public mind Mr. Darwin is perhaps most commonly regarded as the discoverer and founder of the evolution hypothesis," he continues that "the grand idea which he did really originate was not the idea of ' descent with modification,' but the idea of 'natural selection,'" and adds that it was Mr. Darwin's "peculiar glory" to have shown the "nature of the machinery" by which all the variety of animal and vegetable life might have been produced by slow modifications in one or more original types." The theory of evolution," says Mr. Allen, already existed in a more or less shadowy and undeveloped shape"; it was Mr. Darwin's "task in life to raise this theory from the rank of a mere plausible and happy guess to the rank of a highly elaborate and almost universally accepted biological system " (pp. 3-5).

We all admit the value of Mr. Darwin's work as having led to the general acceptance of evolution. No one who remembers average middle-class opinion on this subject before 1860 will deny that it was Mr. Darwin who brought us all round to descent with modification; but Mr. Allen cannot rightly say that evolution had only existed before Mr. Darwin's time in "a shadowy, undeveloped state," or as "a mere plausible and happy guess." It existed in the same form as that in which most people accept it now, and had been carried to its extreme development, before Mr. Darwin's father had been born. It is idle to talk of Buffon's work as a mere plausible and happy guess," or to imply that the first volume of the Philosophie Zoologique of Lamarck was a less full and sufficient demonstration of descent with modification than the Origin of Species is. It has its defects,

shortcomings, and mistakes, but it is an incomparably sounder work than the Origin of Species; and though it contains the deplorable omission of any reference to Buffon, Lamarck does not first grossly misrepresent Buffon, and then tell him to go away, as Mr. Darwin did to the author of the Vestiges and to Lamarck. If Mr. Darwin was believed and honoured for saying much the same as Lamarck had said, it was because Lamarck had borne the brunt of the laughing. The Origin of Species was possible because the Vestiges had prepared the way for it. The Vestiges were made possible by Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin, and these two were made possible by Buffon. Here a somewhat sharper line can be drawn than is usually found possible when defining the ground covered by philosophers. No one broke the ground for Buffon to anything like the extent that he broke it for those who followed him, and these broke it for one another.

Mr. Allen says (p. 11) that, "in Charles Darwin's own words, Lamarck 'first did the eminent service of arousing attention to the probability of all change in the organic as well as in the inorganic world being the result of law, and not of miraculous interposition.'" Mr. Darwin did indeed use these words, but Mr. Allen omits the pertinent fact that he did not use them till six thousand copies of his work had been issued, and an impression been made as to its scope and claims which the event has shown to be not easily effaced; nor does he say that Mr. Darwin only pays these few words of tribute in a quasi-preface, which, though prefixed to his later editions of the Origin of Species, is amply neutralized by the spirit which I have shown to be omnipresent in the body of the work itself. Moreover, Mr. Darwin's statement is inaccurate to an unpardonable extent; his words would be fairly accurate if applied to Buffon, but they do not apply to Lamarck.

Mr. Darwin continues that Lamarck "seems to attribute all the beautiful adaptations in nature, such as the long neck of the giraffe for browsing on the branches of trees," to the

seems

effects of habit. Mr. Darwin should not say that Lamarck "" seems to do this. It was his business to tell us what led Lamarck to his conclusions, not what "seemed " to do so. Any one who knows the first volume of the Philosophie Zoologique will be aware that there is no " in the matter. Mr. Darwin's words " seem to say that it really could not be worth any practical naturalist's while to devote attention to Lamarck's argument; the inquiry might be of interest to antiquaries, but Mr. Darwin had more important work in hand than following the vagaries of one who had been so completely exploded as Lamarck had been. "Seem " is to men what "feel" is to women; women who feel, and men who grease every other sentence with a seem," are alike to be looked on with distrust.

"Still," continues Mr. Allen, " Darwin gave no sign. A flaccid, cartilaginous, unphilosophic evolutionism had full possession of the field for the moment, and claimed, as it were, to be the genuine representative of the young and vigorous biological creed, while he himself was in truth the real heir to all the honours of the situation. He was in possession of the master-key which alone could unlock the bars that opposed the progress of evolution, and still he waited. He could afford to wait. He was diligently collecting, amassing, investigating; eagerly reading every new systematic work, every book of travels, every scientific journal, every record of sport, or exploration, or discovery, to extract from the dead mass of undigested fact whatever item of implicit value might swell the definite co-ordinated series of notes in his own commonplace books for the now distinctly contemplated Origin of Species. His way was to make all sure behind him, to summon up all his facts in irresistible array, and never to set out upon a public progress until he was secure against all possible attacks of the ever-watchful and alert enemy in the rear," etc. (p. 73).

It would not be easy to beat this. Mr. Darwin's worst enemy could wish him no more damaging eulogist.

Of the Vestiges Mr. Allen says that Mr. Darwin "felt