THE WORDS OF DARWIN xli 



to the Fleeming Jenkin argument of the * swamping effect 

 of intercrossing'. There is no doubt that this argument 

 is affected by the MendeHan discovery (see p. xxxiv). Nor 

 is there any dispute about the vast importance of the 

 study of Artificial Selection. The point at issue is 

 whether Darwin considered the selection of man and 

 that of Nature to be essentially the same process. 



7. Antagonism Promoted between Studies^ all of ivhich 

 are Needed for A t tacking the Problem of Evolution. 



Long before the rediscovery of the Mendelian principle, 

 Bateson, in his work, On Variation, did his best to dis- 

 parage other lines of inquiry, again and again asserting 

 that his own study was the only one in which lay 

 any hope of solving the problem of evolution. ' Codlin's 

 the friend, not Short,' was the dogma rather than the 

 advice which he issued to the world. Little effect was 



mount importance, and in this I believe I agree with you. Fleeming 

 Jenkin's arguments have convinced me.' The sentence is ambiguous and 

 was misunderstood by Wallace. Darwin wrote again on February 2 : — 

 ' I must have expressed myself atrociously ; I meant to say exactly the 

 reverse of what you have understood. F. Jenkin argued in the *' North 

 British Review " against single variations ever being perpetuated, and has 

 convinced me, though not in quite so broad a manner as here put. 

 I always thought individual differences more important ; but I was blind 

 and thought that single variations might be preserved much oftener than 

 I now see is possible or probable. I mentioned this in my former note 

 merely because I believed that you had come to a similar conclusion, and 

 I like much to be in accord with you. I believe I was mainly deceived 

 by single variations offering such simple illustrations, as when man 

 selects.' He also wrote on May 2, 1869, to Victor Cams: — 'I have 

 been led . . . to infer that single variations are even of less importance, 

 in comparison with individual differences, than I formerly thought.' 

 Francis Darwin remarks concerning Fleeming Jenkin's article, * It is 

 not a little remarkable that the criticisms, which my father, as I believe, 

 felt to be the most valuable ever made on his views should have come, 

 not from a professed naturalist but from a Professor of Engineering.' 



The above quotations are to be found in Life and Leitcrs, Lond., 1887, 

 vol. iii, pp. 107 and 109. See also pp. 2-4 of the present work. 



