Chapter XVI 
Mr. Grant Allen’s “Charles Darwin” 
T is here that Mr. Grant Allen’s book fails. It is im- 
possible to believe it written in good faith, with no 
end in view, save to make something easy which might 
otherwise be found difficult ; on the contrary, it leaves the 
impression of having been written with a desire to hinder 
us, as far as possible, from understanding things that 
Mr. Allen himself understood perfectly well. 
After saying that “in the public mind Mr. Darwin is 
perhaps most commonly regarded as the discoverer and 
founder of the evolution hypothesis,” he continues that 
“‘ the grand idea which he did really originate was not the 
idea of ‘ descent with modification,’ but the idea of ‘ natural 
selection,’ ”’ and adds that it was Mr. Darwin’s “ peculiar 
glory ”’ to have shown the “ nature of the machinery ” 
by which all the variety of animal and vegetable life might 
have been produced by slow modifications in one or more 
original types. ‘‘ The theory of evolution,” says Mr. Allen, 
“already existed in a more or less shadowy and unde- 
veloped shape ;’ it was Mr. Darwin’s “ task in life to raise 
this theory from the rank of a mere plausible and happy 
guess to the rank of a highly elaborate and almost univer- 
sally accepted biological system ’’(pp. 3-5). 
We all admit the value of Mr. Darwin’s work as having 
led to the general acceptance of evolution. No one who 
remembers average middle-class opinion on this subject 
before 1860 will deny that it was Mr. Darwin who brought 
us all round to descent with modification; but Mr, Allen 
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