282 L UCK„ OR CUNNING ? 



the next generation the place it has acquired with 

 ourselves ; nevertheless, if asked to say who was the 

 man of our own times whose work had produced the 

 most important, and, on the whole, beneficial efiect, I 

 should perhaps wrongly, but still both instinctively 

 and on reflection, name him to whom I have, unfor- 

 tunately, found myself in more bitter opposition than 

 to any other in the whole course of my life. I refer, 

 of course, to Mr. Darwin. 



His claim upon us lies not so much in what is actu- 

 ally found within the four corners of any one of his 

 books, as in the fact of his having written them at 

 all — in the fact of his having brought out one after 

 another, with descent always for its keynote, until 

 the lesson was learned too thoroughly to make it 

 at all likely that it will be forgotten. Mr. Darwin 

 wanted to move his generation, and had the penetra- 

 tion to see that this is not done by saying a thing once 

 for all and leaving it. It almost seems as though it 

 matters less what a man says than the number of 

 times he repeats it, in a more or less varied form. It 

 was here the author of the "Vestiges of Creation" 

 made his most serious mistake. He relied on new 

 editions, and no one pays much attention to new 

 editions — the mark a book makes is almost always 

 made by its first edition. If, instead of bringing out 

 a series of amended editions during the fifteen years' 

 law which Mr. Darwin gave him, Mr. Chambers had 

 followed up the " Vestiges " with new book upon new 

 book, he would have learned much more, and, by 

 consequence, not have been snuffed out so easily once 



