Dec. 17, 1885] 



NATURE 



147 



of the work, is the generous concession made to EngUsh 

 and American scientific readers, by the kindness of the 

 Swedish Government, who have caused this Memoir to 

 be printed throughout in a double column, the left hand 

 of every page being printed in Swedish and the right 

 hand in English. 



Much praise is also due to the editor and author for the 

 careful manner in which the English portion of the work 

 has been passed through the press, and for the very great 

 care bestowed on its translation from the original Swedish. 



CHARLES DAR WIN 

 Charles Darwin. By Grant Allen. " English Worthies," 



Edited by Andrew Lang. (London : Longmans, Green, 



and Co., 1 885.) 

 Charles Darwin, und seiii Vcrhdltniss stt Deiitschland. 



Von Dr. Ernst Kraus. Darwinistiche Schriften, Nr. 16. 



(Leipzig : Ernst Giinther, 1SS5.) 



IT is a curious illustration of the change which has 

 passed over the English mind, that already the 

 name of Darwin should head the list of a projected 

 series of popular books, not on eminent men of science, 

 but on " English Worthies." This first member of the 

 series is, as might have been expected from its author- 

 ship, a pleasing and favourable specimen of a kind of 

 literature for which the public appear to entertain so keen 

 a relish. For it is not only clear and picturesque in style, 

 but is also evidently written con amorc. Indeed, it was 

 impossible for any man of common sense or common 

 sensibility to have come into any kind of relation with 

 Mr. Darwin, without being stirred by feelings of hero- 

 worship, and Mr. Allen's reverential love for the hero is a 

 natural tribute fittingly rendered to the lofty nature and 

 mighty influence for whose loss the universal grief is still 

 so fresh. 



As a biographical sketch the little volume is decidedly 

 a success. It gives in brief compass and good language 

 the history of Mr. Darwin's antecedents, of his life and 

 work, of his relation to contemporary thinkers, and of his 

 presumable influence upon subsequent thought. All of 

 which is done without losing sight of the desirability, in a 

 popular treatise, of upholding the element of romance — a 

 kind of treatment to which the character, the life, and the 

 work of Darwin unite in lending themselves, as it were, 

 by nature. 



In his review of the course of thought upon the theory 

 of evolution prior to Darwin, Mr. Allen is judicious ; and 

 his speculations upon the probable position of this theory 

 at the present time if Darwin had not lived, are interest- 

 ing — tending, as they do, to show how indispensable was 

 the work of the great naturalist in focusing the facts and 

 showing the method. Or, to quote a somewhat happy 

 metaphor of his own, " Darwin was not, as most people 

 falsely imagine, the Moses of evolutionism, the prime 

 mover in the biological revolution ; he was the Joshua 

 who led the world of thinkers and workers into full 

 fruition of that promised land which earlier investigators 

 had but dimly descried from the Pisgah-top of conjectural 

 speculation." 



Almost the only criticisms we have to advance relate to 

 matters of opinion. Thus, for instance, the following 

 passage seems to us absurd : — " Strange to say, the 



abortive theory [of Pangenesis] appeared some years late^ 

 than Herbert Spencer's magnificent all-sided conception 

 of ' Physiological Units,' put forth to meet the self-same 

 difficulty. But while Darwin's hypothesis is rudely mate- 

 rialistic, Herbert Spencer's is built up by an acute and 

 subtle analytical perception of all the analogous facts in 

 universal nature. It is a singular instance of a crude and 

 essentially unphilosophic conception endeavouring to 

 replace a finished and delicate philosophical idea." Now 

 we can very well understand any one who has read both 

 the theories including them in the same condemnation, 

 as too highly speculative, devoid of verification, and so 

 forth. But we cannot understand any one thus exalting 

 the one to the disparagement of the other — and least of 

 all so on the ground that Darwin's version is "rudely 

 materialistic." Where can there be room for any other 

 element than the " materialistic " in the case of an hypo- 

 thesis which has to do with facts purely physiological ? 

 The objection to Spencer's version we have always taken 

 to consist precisely in its " acute and subtle perception 

 of all the analogous facts in universal nature," whereby 

 we are gradually translated beyond the world of physio- 

 logy altogether, until we may exclaim with St. Paul — 

 ''Whether I am in the body or out of the body I cannot 

 tell." 



And this leads us to a second criticism of a more 

 general nature. Mr. Allen, we think, is too fond of com- 

 paring the work of Darwin and Spencer, and when doing 

 so appears to us to attach an altogether undue merit to 

 what he calls the " deductive " as distinguished from the 

 "inductive" method. The work of these two great 

 Englishmen is so unlike that, even though it has been 

 expended upon the same subject-matter, it always seems 

 to us a great mistake to compare them ; we might almost 

 as well seek to compare the work of an historian with that 

 of a poet. " What an ex-tra-or-dinary wealth of thought 

 that man has," was once observed to the present writer 

 by Mr. Darwin : " when I first 'read his ' Principles of 

 Biology ' I was speechless with admiration ; but on read- 

 ing it again I felt in almost every chapter — Why, there is 

 here at least ten years' work for verification." Now this 

 is surel)- a sound judgment, and one, moreover, in no way 

 disparaging to the genius of Mr. Spencer. But if it is a 

 sound judgment, surely also it shows the mistake of com- 

 paring his genius with that of the man who wrote the 

 passage more than once quoted by Mr. Allen — " .\fter 

 five years' work I allowed myself to speculate on the 

 subject." 



Again, with reference to the relative values in biology 

 of the deductive and inductive methods, Mr.- Allen 

 appears to us behind the age. To quote only one 

 passage, he says : — " The English intelligence in par- 

 ticular shows itself as a rule congenitally incapable of 

 appreciating the superior logical certitude of the deductive 

 method. Englishmen will not even believe that the 

 square on the hypotenuse is equal to the squares on the 

 containing sides until they have measured and weighed, 

 as well as they are able by rude experimental devices, a 

 few selected pieces of rudely shaped rectangular paper.'' 

 Now, it is easy to sustain the doctrine here implicated 

 with examples drawn from Euclid ; but biology is not 

 mathematics, and if any one truth more than another is 

 necessarily and forcibly brought home to the inter' "^ence 



