PREFACE xi 



wicked. Indeed, it surprises me, at times, to 

 think how any one who had sunk so low could 

 since have emerged into, at any rate, relative 

 respectability. Personally, like the non-corvine 

 personages in the Ingoldsby legend, I did not feel 

 " one penny the worse." Translated into several 

 languages, the book reached a wider public than 

 I had ever hoped for ; being largely helped, I 

 imagine, by the Ernulphine advertisements to 

 which I have referred. It has had the honour 

 of being freely utilized, without acknowledg- 

 ment, by writers of repute; and, finally, it 

 achieved the fate, which is the euthanasia of a 

 scientific work, of being inclosed among the rubble 

 of the foundations of later knowledge and for- 

 gotten. 



To my observation, human nature has not 

 sensibly changed during the last thirty years. 

 I doubt not that there are truths as plainly 

 obvious and as generally denied, as those con- 

 tained in " Man's Place in Nature," now await- 

 ing enunciation. If there is a young man of the 

 present generation, who has taken as much trouble 

 as I did to assure himself that they are truths, let 

 him come out with them, without troubling his 

 head about the barking of the dogs of St. Ernul- 

 phus. " Veritas praevalebit " some day ; and, even 

 if she does not prevail in his time, he himself will 

 be all the better and the wiser for having tried to 

 help her. And let him recollect that such great 



