62 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. II 



"Administrative Nihilism" referred to above (p. 52), 

 as well as a review of Dana's Crinoids. The former, 

 which appeared in the Contemporary Review for 

 November (Coll. Ess. ii. 120-187) was a review of (1) 

 Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, by A. 

 R. Wallace, (2) The Genesis of Species, by St. George 

 Mivart, F.R.S., and (3) an article in the Quarterly for 

 July 1871, on Darwin's Descent of Man. 



" I am Darwin's bull-dog," he once said, and the 

 Quarterly Reviewers treatment of Darwin, "alike 

 unjust and unbecoming," provoked him into immediate 

 action. " I am about sending you," he writes to 

 Haeckel on Nov. 2, "a little review of some of 

 Darwin's critics. The dogs have been barking at his 

 heels too much of late." Apart from this stricture, 

 however, he notes the "happy change" which "has 

 come over Mr. Darwin's critics. The mixture of 

 ignorance and insolence which at first characterised 

 a large proportion of the attacks with which he was 

 assailed, is no longer the sad distinction of anti- 

 Darwinian criticism." Notes too " that, in a dozen 

 years, the Origin of Species has worked as complete a 

 revolution in biological science as the Principia did in 

 astronomy and it has done so, because, in the words 

 of Helmholtz, it contains ' an essentially new creative 

 thought.' " 



The essay is particularly interesting as giving 

 evidence of his skill and knowledge in dealing with 

 psychology, as against the Quarterly Reviewer, and 

 even with such an unlikely subject as scholastic 



