290 Natural Selection [ch. xv 



sound reasons for a return to his own earlier views. In 

 abandoning his beHef in the importance of individual varia- 

 tions, which previously he had held in a form not incompatible 

 with that now demonstrated to be right, he took a step in the 

 wrong direction. The criticism before which he then gave 

 way has proved invalid '^. To him, most of all men, would 

 the knowledge have come as a delight, that progress, even 

 if in a direction unexpected by himself, had been made 

 with that problem the solubility of which he was the first 

 to make apparent to the world. 



* As to this change of opinion see Darwin's letters to A. R. Wallace 

 {Life a?id Letters, 1888, ni. p. 108). 



