LIFE AND WORKS OF DARWIN 335 



There is some lack of perspective, some egotism, much one-sided- 

 ness in modern criticism. The very announcement, " Darwin de- 

 posed/' attracts such attention as would the notice " Mt. Blanc re- 

 moved " ; does it not argue courage to attack a lion even when 

 deceased? Preoccupation in the study of one great law, as in the case 

 of Bateson on Mendelism and De Vries on Mutation blinds to every 

 other law. To be dispassionate, let us remember that Darwin's hypo- 

 thesis was framed in 1838, seventy years ago. Are the two great 

 Cambridge men, Newton and Darwin, lesser men because astronomy 

 and biology are progressive sciences? Secondly, to know your Darwin 

 you must not judge him by single passages but by all he wrote. Darwin 

 is not to be known through the extremes of those of his followers 

 with whom an hypothesis has become a creed. Heading him afresh 

 and through and through we discover that his " variation " and 

 " variability " are very broad and elastic terms. Every actual example 

 he cites of his main hypothesis, such as the speed of the wolf, or the 

 deer, or the long neck of the giraffe, is a variation both heritable and 

 of adaptive value. 



"When we put together all the concrete cases which he gave to illus- 

 trate his views of selection we see that he includes both continuous and 

 discontinuous variations, both the shades of difference of kind and pro- 

 portion and the little leaps or saltations from character to character. 

 For example, certain cases of immunity to disease are now known to 

 be " unit characters " in Bateson's sense, or " mutants " in the De 

 Vries sense. Darwin repeatedly referred to immunity as a variation 

 which would be preserved by selection. Moreover, Darwin's own re- 

 peated assertion of his profound ignorance of the laws of variation 

 certainly pointed the way to the investigation of these laws, and it is 

 this very study which is modifying the applications of his selection 

 hypothesis. 



From first to last Huxley maintained that it would require many 

 years of study before naturalists could say whether Darwin had been 

 led to overestimate the power of natural selection. Darwin's mind 

 from first to last was also open on this point. Through every edition 

 of the " Origin " we find the passage : 



The laws governing the incipient or primordial variations (unimportant 

 except as the groundwork for selection to act on and then all important) 1 

 shall discuss under several heads. But I can come, as you may well believe, 

 to only very partial and imperfect conclusions. 



In 1869 and in the latest edition of the " Origin " Darwin speaks 

 of " individual differences " as of paramount importance, but he illus- 

 trates these differences by such instances as the selection of passenger 

 pigeons with more powerful wings, or the selection of the lightest 

 colored birds in deserts. 



