242 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



that a man of means, position, and education, — one, 

 moreover, who was nothing if he was not unself- 

 seeking — could play such a trick upon us while pretend- 

 ing to take us into his confidence ; hence the almost 

 universal helief on the part of the public, of which Pro- 

 fessors Haeckel and Ray Lankester and Mr. Grant Allen 

 alike complain — namely, that Mr. Darwin is the origi- 

 nator of the theory of descent, and that his variations 

 are mainly functional. Men of science must not be 

 surprised if the readiness with which we responded to 

 Mr. Darwin's appeal to our confidence is succeeded by 

 a proportionate resentment when the peculiar shabbi- 

 ness of his action becomes more generally understood. 

 For myself, I know not which most to wonder at — the 

 meanness of the writer himself, or the greatness of the 

 service that, in spite of that meanness, he unquestion- 

 ably rendered. 



If Mr. Darwin had been dealing fairly by us, when 

 he saw that we had failed to catch the difference 

 between the Erasmus-Darwinian theory of descent 

 through natural selection from among variations that 

 are mainly functional, and his own alternative theory 

 of descent through natural selection from among varia- 

 tions that are mainly accidental, and, above all, when 

 he saw we were crediting him with other men's work, 

 he would have hastened to set us right. "It is with 

 great regret," he might have written, " and with no 

 small surprise, that I find how generally I have been 

 misunderstood as claiming to be the originator of the 

 theory of descent with modification ; nothing can be 

 further from my intention ; the theory of descent has 



