HO DARWINIANISM. 



ments. For instance, the inhabitants of Otaheite, who, 

 when first discovered, were governed by hereditary kings, 

 had arrived at a far higher grade than another branch of 

 the same people, the New Zealanders who, although 

 benefited by being compelled to turn their attention 

 to agriculture, were republicans in the most absolute 

 sense. In Tierra del Fuego, until some chief shall arise 

 with power sufficient to secure any acquired advantage, 

 such as the domesticated animals, it seems scarcely pos- 

 sible that the political state of the country can be 

 improved. At present, even a piece of cloth given to one 

 is torn into shreds and distributed ; and no one individual 

 becomes richer than another. On the other hand, it is 

 difficult to understand how a chief can arise till there is 

 property of some sort by which he might manifest his 

 superiority and increase his power." 



This is a most remarkable passage, pregnant absolutely 

 with the ultimate political truth never for a moment to 

 be expected on the part of either of the boy combatants, 

 whether Tory captain or Whig naturalist. Surely this 

 passage, if it were seen, and understood, and taken to heart, 

 of any public, how shallow soever surely it would go far 

 to bring more lustre and importance to Darwin in his exist- 

 ence than even the Origin of Species. Here, very specially, 

 is the entire lesson for the present moment in which social- 

 ism, on the one hand, and a miscellaneous and unguaran- 

 teed democracy on the other, are assumed to be, for the 

 society of the future, the only elements at all in question. 

 It is sufficiently strange that we should see such vital 

 ideas as these in the mere stripling Darwin, when the 

 man Darwin, if not simply distracted by an hereditary 

 bee in his bonnet, was wholly absorbed in at least a 

 questionable theory, the interest of which lay entirely, 

 to say so, in bugs and beetles, and not in his fellow-man 

 at all. One wonders that any one who, in the first 



