The Excised “ My’s ” 207 
in 1866, might well become as mute in 1869 as they could 
become without attracting attention, when Mr. Darwin 
saw the passages just quoted, and the hundred pages or 
so that lie between them. 
_I suppose Mr. Darwin cut out the five more my’s that 
disappeared in 1872 because he had not yet fully recovered 
from his scare, and allowed nine to remain in order to cover 
his retreat, and tacitly say that he had not done anything and 
knew nothing whatever about it. Practically, indeed, he 
had not retreated, and must have been well aware that he 
was only retreating technically ; for he must have known 
that the absence of acknowledgment to any earlier writers 
in the body of his work, and the presence of the many 
passages in which every word conveyed the impression that 
the writer claimed descent with modification, amounted to 
a claim as much when the actual word ‘‘ my ” had been 
taken out as while it was allowed to stand. We took Mr. 
Darwin at his own estimate because we could not for a 
moment suppose that a man of means, position, and edu- 
cation,—one, moreover, who was nothing if he was not 
unself-seeking—could play such a trick upon us while 
pretending to take us into his confidence ; hence the almost 
universal belief on the part of the public, of which Professors 
Haeckel and Ray Lankester and Mr. Grant Allen alike 
complain—namely, that Mr. Darwin is the originator of 
the theory of descent, and that his variations are mainly 
functional. Men of science must not be surprised if the 
readiness with which we responded to Mr. Darwin’s appeal 
to our confidence is succeeded by a proportionate resent- 
ment when the peculiar shabbiness of his action becomes 
more generally understood. For myself, I know not which 
most to wonder at—the meanness of the writer himself, or 
the greatness of the service that, in spite of that meanness, 
he unquestionably rendered. 
If Mr. Darwin had been dealing fairly by us, when he saw 
that we had failed to catch the difference between the 
