Lntroductory. II 
understood that I am there appealing to naturalists 
who are specialists in Darwinism. One must say 
advisedly, naturalists who are specialists in Dar- 
winism, because, while the literature of Darwinism 
has become a department of science in itself, there 
are nowadays many naturalists who, without having 
paid any close attention to the subject, deem them- 
selves entitled to hold authoritative opinions with 
regard to it. These men may have done admirable 
work in other departments of natural history, and yet 
their opinions on such matters as we shall hereafter 
have to consider may be destitute of value. As there 
is no necessary relation between erudition in one 
department of science and soundness of judgment , 
in another, the mere fact that a man is distinguished 
as a botanist or zoologist does not in itself qualify him 
as a critic where specially Darwinian questions are 
concerned. Thus it happens now, as it happened 
thirty years ago, that highly distinguished botanists 
and zoologists prove themselves incapable as judges 
of general reasoning. It was Darwin’s complaint that 
for many years nearly all his scientific critics either 
could not, or would not, understand what he had 
written—and this even as regarded the fundamental 
principles of his theory, which with the utmost clear- 
ness he had over and over again repeated. Now the 
only difference between such naturalists and their 
successors of the present day is, that the latter have 
grown up in a Darwinian environment, and so, as 
already remarked, have more or less thoughtlessly — 
adopted some form of Darwinian creed. But this | 
scientific creed is not a whit less dogmatic and 
intolerant than was the more theological one which it 
