DARWIN AND DARWINISM 75 



ing the permanence of species. The struggle, in 

 which the members of the French Academy par- 

 ticipated, ended in the complete discomfiture of 

 the upholders of evolution and the triumph of 

 Cuvier's opinions. Lamarck himself died in pov- 

 erty and neglect. Such was the first act of this 

 modern drama. 



With the appearance of the "Origin of Spe- 

 cies" the curtain rose again, but this time upon 

 a new conflict. Its central figure was Charles 

 Darwin. Not now about evolution only did the 

 battle royal develop, but largely about the the- 

 ory of "natural selection," which alone consti- 

 tutes Darwinism, in the proper sense of that 

 much-misused word. It is Darwin's main origi- 

 nal contribution to science. But before the close 

 of the nineteenth century that doctrine, too, had 

 already met with serious reverses. 



There was no question indeed of abandoning 

 the theory of evolution, whose existence is en- 

 tirely independent of the acceptance or rejection 

 of Darwinism, but merely of gradually relegat- 

 ing to a very subordinate position the doctrine 

 of natural selection, particularly in its extreme 

 acceptation. The followers of Darwin, in their 

 turn, rapidly fell away from his standard, though 

 his name was wildly used as a battle-cry for evo- 

 lutionary doctrines with which he never had the 

 slightest sympathy. We have heard Bebel, like 

 countless Socialists and atheists of every class, 



