42 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



Fresh from the study of the older men and also of Mr. 

 Darwin himself, I failed to see that Mr. Darwin had " un- 

 ravelled and illuminated " a tangled skein, but believed 

 him, on the contrary, to have tangled and obscured 

 what his predecessors had made in great part, if not 

 wholly, plain. With the older writers, I had felt as 

 though in the hands of men who wished to understand 

 themselves and to make their reader understand them 

 with the smallest possible exertion. The older men, if 

 not in full daylight, at any rate saw in what quarter of 

 the sky the dawn was breaking, and were looking 

 steadily towards it. It is not they who have put their 

 hands over their own eyes and ours, and who are crying 

 out that there is no light, but chance and blindness 

 everywhere. 



