6 Unconscious Memory 



of one generation is always liable to be cancelled and 

 obliterated by that of the next. We did not know that 

 the new theory in a quiet way professed to tell us less than 

 the old had done, and declared that it could throw little if 

 any light upon the matter which the earlier writers had 

 endeavoured to illuminate as the central point in their 

 system. We took it for granted that more light must 

 be being thrown instead of less ; and reading in perfect 

 good faith, we rose from our perusal with the impression 

 that Mr. Darwin was advocating the descent of all existing 

 forms of life from a single, or from, at any rate, a very few 

 primordial types ; that no one else had done this hitherto, 

 or that, if they had, they had got the whole subject into 

 a mess, which mess, whatever it was — for we were never 

 told this — was now being removed once for all by Mr. 

 Darwin. 



The evolution part of the story, that is to say, the fact 

 of evolution, remained in our minds as by far the most 

 prominent feature in Mr. Darwin's book ; and being 

 grateful for it, we were very ready to take Mr. Darwin's 

 work at the estimate tacitly claimed for it by himself, 

 and vehemently insisted upon by reviewers in influential 

 journals, who took much the same line towards the earlier 

 writers on evolution as Mr. Darwin himself had taken. 

 But perhaps nothing more prepossessed us in Mr. Darwin's 

 favour than the air of candour that was omnipresent 

 throughout his work. The prominence given to the 

 arguments of opponents completely carried us away ; it was 

 this which threw us off our guard. It never occurred to us 

 that there might be other and more dangerous opponents 

 who were not brought forward. Mr. Darwin did not tell 

 us what his grandfather and Lamarck would have had to 

 say to this or that. Moreover, there was an unobtrusive 

 parade of hidden learning and of difficulties at last over- 

 come which was particularly grateful to us. Whatever 

 opinion might be ultimately come to concerning the 

 value of his theory, there could be but one about the value 



