200 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



duration of past geological periods. Therefore, when 

 I happened to read Malthus on population, the idea of 

 natural selection flashed on me. Of all minor points, 

 the last which I appreciated was the importance and 

 cause of the principle of divergence." 



This is all very naive, and accords perfectly with the 

 introductory paragraphs of the " Origin of Species ; " 

 it gives us the same picture of a solitary thinker, a 

 poor, lonely, friendless student of nature, who had never 

 so much as heard of Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, or 

 Lamarck. Unfortunately, however, we cannot forget 

 the description of the influences which, according to 

 Mr. Grant Allen, did in reality surround Mr. Darwin's 

 youth, and certainly they are more what we should 

 have expected than those suggested rather than ex- 

 pressly stated by Mr. Darwin. " Everywhere around 

 him," says Mr. Allen,* "in his childhood and, 

 youth these great but formless " (why " formless " ?) 

 " evolutionary ideas were brewing and fermenting. 

 The scientific society of his elders and of the con- 

 temporaries among whom he grew up was permeated 

 with the leaven of Laplace and Lamarck, of Hutton 

 and of Herschel. Inquiry was especially everywhere 

 rife as to the origin and nature of specific distinctions 

 among plants and animals. Those who believed in 

 the doctrine of Bufibn and of the 'Zoonomia,' and 

 those who disbelieved in it, alike, were profoundly 

 interested and agitated in soul by the far-reaching 

 implications of that fundamental problem. On every 

 side evolutionism, in its crude form." (I suppose Mr. 



* Page 17. 



