Chapter XVIII 
Per Contra 
* HE evil that men do lives after them ”* is happily 
not so true as that the good lives after them, while 
the ill is buried with their bones, and to no one does this 
correction of Shakespeare’s unwonted spleen apply more 
fully than to Mr. Darwin. Indeed it was somewhat thus 
that we treated his books even while he was alive; the 
good, descent, remained with us, while the ill, the deification 
of luck, was forgotten as soon as we put down his work. 
Let me now, therefore, as far as possible, quit the ungrateful 
task of dwelling on the defects of Mr. Darwin’s work and 
character, for the more pleasant one of insisting upon their 
better side, and of explaining how he came to be betrayed 
into publishing the ‘‘ Origin of Species ” without reference 
to the works of his predecessors. 
‘In the outset I would urge that it is not by any single 
book that Mr. Darwin should be judged. I do not believe 
that any one of the three principal works on which his 
reputation is founded will maintain with the next genera- 
tion the place it has acquired with ourselves ; nevertheless, 
if asked to say who was the man of our own times whose 
work had produced the most important, and, on the whole, 
beneficial effect, I should perhaps wrongly, but still both 
instinctively and on reflection, name him to whom I have, 
unfortunately, found myself in more bitter opposition than 
* As these pages are on the point of going to press, I see that the 
writer of an article on Liszt in the ‘‘ Atheneum ’’ makes the same 
emendation on Shakespeare’s words that I have done. 
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