PHILOSOPHY OF DR. ERASMUS DARWIN. 1 97 



tise on evolution is that there is not enough of it ; what 

 there is, so far from being " erroneous," is admirable. 

 But so great a subject should have had a book to itself, 

 and not a mere fraction of a book. If his opponents, 

 not venturing to dispute with him, passed over one 

 book in silence, he should have followed it up with 

 another, and another, and another, year by year, as 

 Buffon and Lamarck did ; it is only thus that men can 

 expect to succeed against vested interests. Dr. Darwin 

 could speak with a freedom that was denied to Buffon. 

 He took Buffon at his word as well as he could, and 

 carried out his principles to what he conceived to be 

 their logical conclusion. This was doubtless what 

 Buffon had desired and reckoned oh, but, as I have 

 said already, I question how far Dr. Darwin understood 

 Buffon's humour; he does not present any of the pheno- 

 mena of having done so, and therefore I am afraid he 

 must be said to have missed it. 



Like Buffon, Dr. Darwin had no wish to see far 

 beyond the obvious ; he missed good things sometimes, 

 but he gained more than he lost ; he knew that it is 

 always on the margin, as it were, of the self-evident 

 that the greatest purchase against the nearest difficulty 

 is obtainable. His life was not one of Herculean effort, 

 but, like the lives of all those organisms that are most 

 likely to develop and transmit a useful modification, it 

 was one of well-sustained activity ; it was a long-conti- 

 nued keeping open of the windows of his own mind, 

 much after the advice he gave to the Nottingham 

 weavers. Dr. Darwin knew, and, I imagine, quite in- 

 stinctively, that nothing tends to oversight like over- 



