Mr. Grant Aliens Botanical Fables 3 



fashion. Men who are quite incapable of even following 

 an argument based on the structure of a tendon, or on 

 the peculiarities of the "hippocampus major," can pick 

 up a buttercup or a snail-shell and follow with intelligence 

 and interest the lesson which the object is made to 

 illustrate. The great doctrine of evolution can thus 

 alone, it is said, be brought home to the general public ; 

 thus alone can be satisfied the yearning, natural to men, 

 for information as to how things came to be as they are. 



Now it is perfectly true that things are thus brought 

 home to most of us as they could not otherwise be 

 brought, and an opportunity is given us of forming a 

 judgment on the subject, far more substantial than we 

 could otherwise form. But it may be that this judgment 

 will be adverse to the theories set before us, and that 

 the insight imparted to us into the ways of nature will 

 furnish us with arguments, not for, but against, the 

 exhibitor's creed. The many must needs be mute when 

 the question is referred to niceties of anatomy, but may 

 feel themselves quite as competent to speak as any 

 specialist, when the facts employed as data for discussion 

 demand only a plain pair of eyes to examine them. 



Mr. Grant Allen is a notable specimen of the neo- 

 peripatetic school. He has applied himself of set pur- 

 pose to popularize the doctrine of evolution, a doctrine 

 which he follows to the extremity of determinationism, 

 by taking simple and well-known natural objects, and 

 giving such an explanation as evolutionary principles 

 afford of their more striking external features. He 

 claims to have at least suggested the right way to go 

 to work in the matter, even though he has not gone very 

 deep. As I have said, I agree with him thus far. He 

 has given plain people an opportunity of forming for 

 themselves a judgment worth something on the subject 

 before them, instead of feeling themselves forced to bow 

 to the ipse dixit of a man who knows how to use a 

 microscope or a scalpel. It may be worth while, there- 

 fore, to take his various writings as a sort of running 

 text on which to base some remarks concerning the 



