146 Luck, or Cunning ? 
but I cannot remember anything having been ever 
attempted against me which could cause fear in any ordin- 
arily constituted person. If, then, the Duke of Argyll is 
right in saying that Mr. Spencer has shown a caution almost 
amounting to timidity in attacking Mr. Darwin’s theory, 
either Mr. Spencer must be a singularly timid person, or 
there must be some cause for his timidity which is not 
immediately obvious. If terror reigns anywhere among 
scientific men, I should say it reigned among those who have 
staked imprudently on Mr. Darwin’s reputation as a 
philosopher. I may add that the discovery of the Duke’s 
impression that there exists a scientific reign of terror, 
explains a good deal in his writings which it has not been 
easy to understand hitherto. 
As regards the theory of natural selection, the Duke 
says — 
“From the first discussions which arose on this subject, I 
have ventured to maintain that . . . the phrase ‘ natural 
selection ’ represented no true physical cause, still less the 
complete set of causes requisite to account for the orderly 
procession of organic forms in Nature ; that in so far as it 
assumed variations to arise by accident it was not only 
essentially faulty and incomplete, but fundamentally 
erroneous ; in short, that its only value lay in the conveni- 
ence with which it groups under one form of words, highly 
charged with metaphor, an immense variety of causes, 
some purely mental, some purely vital, and others purely 
physical or mechanical.” 
