Introduction ie) 
did as we were told, swallowed it without a murmur, were 
lavish in our expressions of gratitude, and, for some twenty 
years or so, through the mouths of our leading biologists, 
ordered design peremptorily out of court, if she so much as 
dared to show herself. Indeed, we have even given life 
pensions to some of the most notable of these biologists, I 
suppose in order to reward them for having hoodwinked 
us so much to our satisfaction. 
Happily the old saying, Naturam expellas furcd, tamen 
usque recurret, still holds true, and the reaction that has 
been gaining force for some time will doubtless ere long 
brush aside the cobwebs with which those who have a 
vested interest in Mr. Darwin’s reputation as a philosopher 
still try to fog our outlook. Professor Mivart was, as I have 
said, among the first to awaken us to Mr. Darwin’s denial 
of design, and to the absurdity involved therein. He well 
showed how incredible Mr Darwin’s system was found to be, 
as soon as it was fully realised, but there he rather left us. 
He seemed to say that we must have our descent and our 
design too, but he did not show how we were to manage 
this with rudimentary organs still staring us in the face. 
His work rather led up to the clearer statement of the 
difficulty than either put it before us in so many words, or 
tried to remove it. Nevertheless there can be no doubt 
that the ‘“‘ Genesis of Species’? gave Natural Selection 
what will prove sooner or later to be its death-blow, in 
spite of the persistence with which many still declare that 
it has received no hurt, and the sixth edition of the ‘“ Origin 
of Species,” published in the following year, bore abundant 
traces of the fray. Moreover, though Mr. Mivart gave us 
no overt aid, he pointed to the source from which help 
might come, by expressly saying that his most important 
objection to Neo-Darwinism had no force against Lamarck. 
To Lamarck, therefore, I naturally turned, and soon saw 
that the theory on which I had been insisting in “ Life and 
Habit ” was in reality an easy corollary on his system, 
