X PREFACE. 



understood." These very experts themselves (Hooker 

 and Lyell), he confesses to Gray, " sometimes use ex- 

 pressions to which I demur." 



With such facts in front of us though I fear it can 

 only be regarded as impertinence to say so it is just 

 possible that what exact point is concerned in the 

 Origin of Species, is not fairly understood even yet. I 

 am not sure, in fact, that any one ever thinks that there 

 is at all any exact point concerned. Evolution, taken 

 quite generally, rather perhaps quite vaguely, is con- 

 ceived to be enough ; and it never enters one's head that 

 there is any the least need to go deeper. But theories of 

 evolution are by no means one only there are several 

 of them ; and if they are all right in that they hold of 

 evolution, they are not all therefore necessarily right in 

 that they are theories. 



I have not the slightest doubt myself that there is a 

 true theory of evolution, but 



In view, then, of the difficulty say of statement 

 which we see deplored by Mr. Darwin himself, perhaps it 

 may be allowable for another, without undue conceit, to 

 attempt to make all Mr. Darwin's proceedings plain 

 fairly, faithfully, and fully plain even as he meant 

 them. 



Now, the single Darwinian proposition may In- ex- 

 pressed thus : 



Species are naturally modified into species, by natural 

 variation, naturally realised into , a new natural relation, 

 through natural divergence (selection) ; and naturally in 

 the struggle for existence. 



And it is this sentence which it is my endeavour in 



