VI PREFACE 



merit I did not fail to indicate its weak points. I 

 have never seen any reason for departing from the 

 position which I took up in these two essays ; and 

 the assertion which I sometimes meet with nowa- 

 days, that I have " recanted " or changed my 

 opinions about Mr. Darwin's views, is quite unin- 

 telligible to me. 



As I have said in the seventh essay, the fact of 

 evolution is to my mind sufficiently evidenced by 

 palaeontology ; and I remain of the opinion ex- 

 pressed in the second, that until selective breeding 

 is definitely proved to give rise to varieties infertile 

 with one another, the logical foundation of the 

 theory of natural selection is incomplete. We still 

 remain very much in the dark about the causes of 

 variation; the apparent inheritance of acquired 

 characters in some cases; and the struggle for 

 existence within the organism, which probably 

 lies at the bottom of both of these phenomena. 



Some apology is due to the reader for the repro- 

 duction of the "Lectures to Working Men" in 

 their original state. They were taken down in 

 shorthand by Mr. J. Aldous Mays, who requested 

 me to allow him to print them. I was very much 

 pressed with work at the time ; and, as I could not 

 revise the reports, which I imagined, moreover, 

 would be of little or no interest to any but my 

 auditors, I stipulated that a notice should be pre- 

 fixed to that effect. This was done ; but it did not 



