WHAT CONDITIONED THE WORK AND ITS SUCCESS. 203 



" you would utterly damn." He himself speaks well of 

 his reviewers (i.,89): "they have treated him almost 

 always honestly." And yet he adds, " my views have 

 been often grossly misrepresented, bitterly opposed and 

 ridiculed, but this has been generally done," he meekly 

 doubts not, " in good faith." All other authors, his son 

 says (i. 157), were spoken of by him "as persons de- 

 serving of respect. In cases where he thought lightly 

 of the author, he speaks of him in such a way that no 

 one would suspect it. In other cases he treats the 

 confused writings of ignorant persons as though the 

 fault lay with himself for not appreciating or under- 

 standing them." Yet, " he had the keenest of instincts 

 as to whether a man was trustworthy or not." Of 

 course, it is the courtesy, the acquired societary tone, 

 that obtains in such controlled expression. Mr. Darwin 

 exhibited ever in the end an absolute power of modera- 

 tion, a perfect mastery of " inhibition." Nevertheless, in 

 the various elements that went to this, the contributions 

 of the arch little rogue that watered the primrose is not 

 wholly to be left out of count. It was very fair of Mr. 

 Darwin, in his " Historical Sketch," that is preface to the 

 Origin, to give the names of actually some two dozen 

 individuals who precede himself in the discovery of natural 

 selection ; but is not the prestige of positive establishment 

 almost won for the doctrine so ? and inasmuch as Mr. 

 Darwin is, are not the whole twenty-four of them not ? 



3. As to friends, the letters of Mr. Darwin, for many 

 years, and to many correspondents, are a general proof here. 

 They concern his single theory, the most of them, and for 

 that theory, as the immediate correspondent is, it is impos- 

 sible to imagine anything more coaxing. We have seen 

 enough in that kind already as in reference to Lyell, 

 Hooker, and the rest ; but, by way of reminder, we may 

 just quote here, how he says to Hooker once (ii. 31) : "I 



