i 3 2 MY LIFE 



the deaf-mute is in a far less painful position than the blind; 

 indeed, Professor Newcomb told them, in an address he gave 

 at the college in 1885, that they were peculiarly fortunate in 

 being so situated as to escape much of the Idle, useless talk 

 that is going on in the world. His own time, he said, was 

 largely taken up by people who had nothing to say. Almost 

 everything worth knowing that has been said is now to be 

 found in print. 



While at Washington I was asked by two American papers 

 — The Nation and The Independent — to review a book just 

 published by Professor Gope, with the rather catching title, 

 " The Origin of the Fittest," made up by combining Darwin's 

 title, " The Origin of Species," and Herbert Spencer's " The 

 Survival of the Fittest." With such a title from a man who, 

 owing to his extensive knowledge of anatomy and palaeon- 

 tology, was looked up to as a kind of American Haeckel, a 

 really important work might naturally be expected. But 

 this volume consisted almost entirely of a collection of lec- 

 tures, addresses, and magazine articles, printed just as they 

 were written or delivered, some in the first, some in the third 

 person, with wdiole pages of the same matter repeated in 

 different chapters, some of the illustrations having no refer- 

 ence in the text. In fact, a more egregious case of book- 

 making with a misleading title was never perpetrated. Of 

 course, there was good and original matter in it; but all 

 those parts which attempted to justify the title by propound- 

 ing a new theory of evolution were either quite unsound in 

 reasoning or wholly unintelligible. When the second appli- 

 cation came, I told the editor that I had already agreed to 

 write one, but could easily write another from a different 

 point of view. This was accepted, and as the reviews were 

 unsigned, it was not difficult to make them appear to be by 

 distinct writers. In the first (which appeared in The Nation, 

 February 10, 1887) I gave a careful summary of the most 

 important contents of the volume, pointing out the novel 

 views and stating how he differed from the Darwinians and 

 from the chief other schools of biologists. Only in one para- 



