270 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



doctrine true) " entirely in consequence of Mr. Darwin's 

 having demonstrated the mechanism " (There is no 

 mechanism in the matter, and if there is, Mr. Darwin 

 did not show it. He made some words which con- 

 fused us and prevented us from seeing that " the pre- 

 servation of favoured races " was a cloak for " luck," 

 and that this was all the explanation he was giving) 

 " by which the evolution is possible ; it was almost 

 universally rejected, while such undemonstrable agen- 

 cies as those arbitrarily asserted to exist by Professor 

 Semper and Mr. George Henslow were the only means 

 suggested by its advocates." 



Undoubtedly the theory of descent with modifica- 

 tion, which received its first sufficiently ample and 

 undisguised exposition in 1 809 with the " Philosophie 

 Zoologique " of Lamarck, shared the common fate of all 

 theories that revolutionise opinion on important matters, 

 and was fiercely opposed by the Huxley's, Eomanes's, 

 Grant Aliens, and Ray Lankesters of its time. It had 

 to face the reaction in favour of the Church which 

 began in the days of the first empire, as a natural 

 consequence of the horrors of the revolution ; it had to 

 face the social influence and then almost Darwinian 

 reputation of Cuvier, whom Lamarck could not, or 

 would not, square ; it was put forward by one who was 

 old, poor, and ere long blind. What theory could do 

 more than just keep itself alive under conditions so 

 unfavourable ? Even under the most favourable con- 

 ditions descent with modification would have been a 

 hard plant to rear, but, as things were, the wonder is 

 that it was not killed outright at once. We all know 



