164 Luck, or Cunning ? 
enabled them to turn their luck to account, he must have 
been easily satisfied. Perhaps he was in the same frame of 
mind as when he said* that “ even an imperfect answer ” 
“‘ would be satisfactory,” but surely this is being thankful 
for small mercies. 
On the following page Mr. Darwin says :—‘‘ Although 
I am fully’ (why “ fully ’’ ?) “ convinced of the truth of 
the views given in this volume under the form of an 
abstract, I by no means expect to convince experienced 
naturalists,’ &c. I have not quoted the whole of Mr. 
Darwin’s sentence, but it implies that any experienced 
naturalist who remained unconvinced was an old-fashioned, 
prejudiced person. I confess that this is what I rather feel 
about the experienced naturalists who differ in only too 
great numbers from myself, but I did not expect to find so 
much of the old Adam remaining in Mr. Darwin ; I did not 
expect to find him support me in the belief that naturalists 
are made of much the same stuff as other people, and, if 
they are wise, will look upon new theories with distrust 
until they find them becoming generally accepted. I am 
not sure that Mr. Darwin is not just a little bit flippant 
here. 
Sometimes I ask myself whether it is possible that, not 
being convinced, I may be an experienced naturalist after 
all; at other times, when I read Mr. Darwin’s works and 
those of his eulogists, I wonder whether there is not some 
other Mr. Darwin, some other “ Origin of Species,’’ some 
other Professors Huxley, Tyndal, and Ray Lankester, and 
whether in each case some malicious fiend has not palmed 
off a counterfeit upon me that differs toto clo from the 
original. I felt exactly the same when I read Goethe’s 
‘* Wilhelm Meister” ; I could not believe my eyes, which 
nevertheless told me that the dull diseased trash I was so 
toilsomely reading was a work which was commonly held 
* “ Animals and Plants under Domestication,” vol. ii., p. 367, 
ed. 1875. 
