34 DARWIN AND NATURAL SELECTION 



really did was, in the first place, to suggest a 

 method, or methods, by means of which he thought 

 transformation might have taken place ; and, 

 secondly, and still more importantly, to make the 

 theory of transformation popular. 



" To the end of time, if the question be asked, 

 * Who taught people to believe in Evolution ? ' 

 the answer must be that it was Mr. Darwin. This 

 is true, and it is hard to see what palm of higher 

 praise can be awarded to any philosopher." So 

 writes one of Darwin's most serious critics and 

 opponents.* Transformism, then, is not Darwin- 

 ism, though Darwin was a transfer mist. 



In the next place, there is the monistic phil- 

 osophy, often called Darwinism, and trumpeted 

 as such by little (and usually misleading) manuals 

 and by Haeckel in his much-lauded but scientifi- 

 cally discredited philosophical works. " We should 

 never have reached this supreme general con- 

 ception " (of the so-called " all-embracing c Law 

 of Substance ' ")t " if Charles Darwin a ' mon- 

 istic philosopher ' in the true sense of the word 

 had not prepared the way by his theory of descent 

 by natural selection, and crowned the great work 

 of his life by the association of this theory with a 

 naturalistic anthropology."! After this blast of 



* Samuel Butler, Evolution, Old and New, Preface to 2nd ed. (1882). 



t For a criticism of which see Sir Oliver Lodge's Life and 

 Matter. " He writes (*'.#., Haeckel) in so forcible and positive and 

 determined a fashion from the vantage ground of scientific know- 

 ledge, that he exerts an undue influence on the uncultured amongst 

 his readers, and causes them to fancy that only benighted fools or 

 credulous dupes can really disagree with the historical criticisms, 

 the speculative opinions and philosophical, or perhaps unphil- 

 osophical, conjectures thus powerfully set forth," op. cit., p. 135. 

 ; + Article in Darwin and Modern Science, p. 151. 



