Darwin’s Variations 165 
to be one of the great literary masterpieces of the world. 
It seemed to me that there must be some other Goethe 
and some other Wilhelm Meister. Indeed I find myself so 
depressingly out of harmony with the prevailing not 
opinion only, but spirit—if, indeed, the Huxleys, Tyndals, 
Miss Buckleys, Ray Lankesters, and Romaneses express 
the prevailing spirit as accurately as they appear to do— 
that at times I find it difficult to believe I am not the 
victim of hallucination ; nevertheless I know that either 
every canon, whether of criticism or honourable conduct, 
which I have learned to respect is an impudent swindle, 
suitable for the cloister only, and having no force or appli- 
cation in the outside world ; or else that Mr. Darwin and his 
supporters are misleading the public to the full as much as 
the theologians of whom they speak at times so disap- 
provingly. They sin, moreover, with incomparably less 
excuse. Right as they doubtless are in much, and much as 
we doubtless owe them (so we owe much also to the 
theologians, and they also are right in much), they are 
giving way to a temper which cannot be indulged with 
impunity. I know the great power of academicism ; 
I know how instinctively academicism everywhere must 
range itself on Mr. Darwin’s side, and how askance it 
must look on those who write as I do; but I know also 
that there is a power before which even academicism must 
bow, and to this power I look not unhopefully for support. 
As regards Mr. Spencer’s contention that Mr. Darwin 
leaned more towards function as he grew older, I do not 
doubt that at the end of his life Mr. Darwin believed 
modification to be mainly due to function, but the passage. 
quoted on page 62 written in 1839, coupled with the con- 
cluding paragraph of the “‘ Origin of Species’ written in 
1859, and allowed to stand during seventeen years of 
revision, though so much else was altered—these passages, 
when their dates and surroundings are considered, suggest 
strongly that Mr. Darwin thought during all the forty years 
