194 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



that if he was very very patient, and went on reflecting 

 for years and years longer, upon all sorts of facts, 

 good, bad, and indifferent, which could possibly have 

 any bearing on the subject — and what fact might not 

 possibly have some bearing ? — well, something, as 

 against the nothing that had been made out hitherto, 

 might by some faint far-away possibility be one day 

 dimly seen. It was only what he had seen in South 

 America that made all this occur to him. He had 

 never seen' anything about descent with modification 

 in any book, nor heard any one talk about it as having 

 been put forward by other people ; if he had, he would, 

 of course, have been the first to say so ; he was not 

 as other philosophers are ; so the mountain went on 

 for years and years gestating, but still there was no 

 labour. 



" My work," continues Mr. Darwin, " is now nearly 

 finished ; but as it will take me two or three years 

 to complete it, and as my health is far from strong, 

 I have been urged to publish this abstract. I 

 have been more especially induced to do this, as Mr. 

 Wallace, who is now studying the natural history of 

 the Malay Archipelago, has arrived at almost exactly 

 the same general conclusions that I have on the origin 

 of species." Mr. Darwin was naturally anxious to 

 forestall Mr. Wallace, and hurried up with his book. 

 What reader, on finding descent with modification to 

 be its most prominent feature, could doubt — especially 

 if new to the subject, as the greater number of Mr. 

 Darwin's readers in 1859 were — that this same descent 

 with modification was the theory which Mr. Darwin 



