296 The Study of Animal Life part iv 



chemistry, and so made the subject-matter of a true science 

 or study of causes." I have quoted these two sentences 

 because they illustrate better than any others that I have 

 seen to what exaggeration enthusiasm for a theory will lead 

 a strong intellect. But listen to a few sentences from 

 Samuel Butler, which I quote because they well illustrate 

 that the critics of Darwinism may also be extreme, and in 

 the hope that the contrast may be sufficiently interesting to 

 induce you to think out the question for yourselves. 



"Buffon planted, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck watered, 

 but it was Mr. Darwin who said ' That fruit is ripe,' and 

 shook it into his lap. . . . Darwin was heir to a dis- 

 credited truth, and left behind him an accredited fallacy. 

 . . . Do animals and plants grow into conformity with 

 their surroundings because they and their fathers and 

 mothers take pains, or because their uncles and aunts go 

 away ? . . . The theory that luck is the main means of 

 organic modification is the most absolute denial of God 

 which it is possible for the human mind to conceive. . . ." 



7. Darwin's Fellow-workers. — But we must bring this 

 historical sketch to a close by referring to four of the more 

 prominent of Darwin's fellow-workers — Wallace, Spencer, 

 Haeckel, and Huxley. 



Alfred Russel Wallace, contemporary with Darwin, 

 not only in years, but in emphasising the truth of evolution- 

 ary conceptions, and in recognising the fact of natural 

 selection, has been justly called the Nestor of Biolog>'. No 

 one will be slow to appreciate the splendid unselfishness 

 with which he has for thirty years sunk himself in the Dar- 

 winian theory, or the scientific disinterestedness which leads 

 him from the very title of his last work ^ to its close, to 

 say so little — perhaps too little — of the important part 

 which he has played in evolving the doctrine. " It was," 

 Romanes says, " in the highest degree dramatic that the 

 great idea of natural selection should have occurred inde- 

 pendently and in precisely the same form to two working 

 naturalists ; that these naturalists should have been country- 

 men ; that they should have agreed to publish their theory 

 ^ Darwinism, London, 1889. 



