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CHAPTER XVI. 



MK. GEAKT ALLEN'S "CHARLES DAEWIN." 



It is here that Mr. Grant Allen's book fails. It is 

 impossible to believe it written in good faith, with no 

 end in view, save to make something easy which 

 might otherwise be found difficult ; on the contrary, it 

 leaves the impression of having been written with a 

 desire to hinder us, as far as possible, from under- 

 standing things that Mr. Allen himself understood 

 perfectly well. 



After saying that " in the public mind Mr. Darwin 

 is perhaps most commonly regarded as the discoverer 

 and founder of the evolution hypothesis," he continues 

 that " the grand idea which he did really origiuate 

 was not the idea of ' descent with modification,' but 

 the idea of ' natural selection,' " and adds that it was 

 Mr. Darwin's " peculiar glory " to have shown the 

 " nature of the machinery " by which all the variety 

 of animal and vegetable life might have been produced 

 by slow modifications in one or more original types. 

 " The theory of evolution," says Mr. Allen, " already 

 existed in a more or less shadowy and undeveloped 

 shape ; " it was Mr. Darwin's " task in life to raise this 



