Introduction 7 



of the example he had set to men of science generally by 

 the perfect frankness and uns'^lfishness of his work. Friends 

 and foes alike combined to do homage to Mr. Darwin in 

 this respect. 



For, brilliant as the reception of the " Origin of Species " 

 was, it met in the first instance with hardly less hostile 

 tlian friendly criticism. But the attacks were ill-directed ; 

 they came from a suspected quarter, and those who led 

 them did not detect more than the general public had 

 done what were the really weak places in Mr. Darwin's 

 armour. They attacked him where he was strongest ; and 

 above all, they were, as a general rule, stamped with a 

 disingenuousness which at that time we believed to be 

 peculiar to theological writers and alien to the spirit of 

 science. Seeing, therefore, that the men of science ranged 

 themselves more and more decidedly on Mr. Darwin's 

 side, while his opponents had manifestly — so far as I can 

 remember, all the more prominent among them — a bias 

 to which their hostility was attributable, we left off look- 

 ing at the arguments against " Darwinism," as we now 

 began to call it, and pigeon-holed the matter to the effect 

 that there was one evolution, and that Mr. Darwin was its 

 prophet. 



The blame of our errors and oversights rests primarily 

 with Mr. Darwin himself. The first, and far the most 

 important, edition of the " Origin of Species " came out 

 as a kind of literary Melchisedec, without father and with- 

 out mother in the works of other people. Here is its 

 opening paragraph : — 



" When on board H.^M.S. ' Beagle ' as naturalist, I was 

 much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the 

 inhabitants of South America, and in the geological rela- 

 tions of the present to the past inhabitants of that con- 

 tinent. These facts seemed to me to throw some light on 

 the origin of species — that mystery of mysteries, as it has 

 been called by one of our greatest philosophers. On my 

 return home, it occurred to me, in 1837, that something 

 might be made out on this question by patiently accumulating 



