216 Luck, or Cunning ? 
in misunderstanding it ;”” and a little lower he adds that 
Mr. Darwin’s book “ in no essential respect contradicts the 
‘ Vestiges,’’’ but that, on the contrary, ‘“ while adding to 
its explanations of nature, it expressed the same general 
ideas.”* This is substantially true ; neither Mr. Darwin’s 
nor Mr. Chambers’s are good books, but the main object of 
both is to substantiate the theory of descent with modifica- 
tion, and, bad as the “‘ Vestiges’’ is, it is ingenuous as 
compared with the “ Origin of Species.” Subsequently to 
Mr. Chambers’s protest, and not till, as I have said, six 
thousand copies of the ‘‘ Origin of Species ” had been issued, 
the sentence complained of by Mr. Chambers was expunged, 
but without a word of retractation, and the passage which 
Mr. Allen thinks so generous was inserted into the “ brief 
but imperfect ”’ sketch which Mr. Darwin prefixed—after 
Mr. Chambers had been effectually snuffed out—to all 
subsequent editions of his “‘ Origin of Species.’”’ There is no 
excuse for Mr. Darwin’s not having said at least this much 
about the author of the “ Vestiges ’”’ in his first edition ; 
and on finding that he had misrepresented him in a passage 
which he did not venture to retain, he should not have 
expunged it quietly, but should have called attention to 
his mistake in the body of his book, and given every 
prominence in his power to the correction. 
Let us now examine Mr. Allen’s record in the matter of 
natural selection. For years he was one of the foremost 
apostles of Neo-Darwinism, and any who said a good word 
for Lamarck were told that this was the ‘‘ kind of mystical 
nonsense ’’ from which Mr. Allen “‘ had hoped Mr. Darwin 
had for ever saved us.” Then in October 1883 came an 
article in ‘‘ Mind,’ from which it appeared as though Mr. 
Allen had abjured Mr. Darwin and all his works. 
“There are only two conceivable ways,” he then wrote, 
“in which any increment of brain power can ever have 
* “ Vestiges,”’ &c., ed. 1860; Proofs, Hlustrations, &c., p. xiv. 
{ Examiner, May 17, 1879, review of ‘‘ Evolution Old and New.” 
