152 DARWINIANISM. 



itself was not anomalistic, but" always homologistic : it 

 saw affinity and plan throughout all that lives. Mr. 

 Darwin himself tells us of this in his Journal (p. 94). 

 When he wrote then (in 1833), he had never a doubt 

 of " the grand scheme, common to the present and past 

 ages, on which organised beings have been created!' Mr. 

 Darwin's Eeviewers just seem to have been similarly in- 

 fluenced ; for he is perpetually grumbling at the whole 

 of them for their neglect of the sacred affinities, geologies, 

 geographies, etc. Yet what is his own example ? His 

 Lyells, Hookers, and Grays, as we have said, are all 

 cheerfully let off for the affinities, etc., but they are 

 pinned to variation and selection. 



So far of the matter, then as a matter common to 

 all, it may be allowably, and for result, innocuously, 

 omitted from consideration here, where it is what is 

 specially Carlo-Darwinian that is alone in question, 

 where it is not so much evolution (certainly as a process 

 in some form genuine) that is the subject contemplated, 

 as only on the whole w r hat is generally understood to be 

 the Darwinian scheme of natural selection. 



A like reason applies to the form of the book. That 

 form is a compilation. Lyell, Hooker, Asa Gray, and 

 Mr. Darwin himself rank as, and are, workers in science ; 

 and so it happens that, in the course of the correspond- 

 ence that occupies the three volumes of the Life and 

 Letters, the reader is made to understand that, among 

 workers, compilers are but as objects of scoff. " To judge 

 on a subject on which one knows nothing : compilers," 

 says Mr. Darwin significantly, " must do this to a certain 

 extent (you know I value and rank high compilers, being 

 one myself) ! " These words are plain, if jocose ; and 

 others such repeatedly occur in the same volumes, as, for 

 example (ii. 97), these: "I sometimes despise myself as 

 a poor compiler ; " and again : "I have been led to 



