242 Luck, or Cunning ? 
expected that the writer who at the age of thirty-three 
could publish the foregoing passage should twenty years 
later achieve the reputation of being the profoundest 
philosopher of his time. 
I have not sufficient technical knowledge to enable me 
to speak certainly, but I question his having been the 
great observer and master of experiment which he is gener- 
ally believed to have been. His accuracy was, I imagine, 
generally to be relied upon as long as accuracy did not 
come into conflict with his interests as a leader in the scienti- 
fic world ; when these were at stake he was not to be trusted 
for a moment. Unfortunately they were directly or in- 
directly at stake more often than one could wish. His book 
on the action of worms, however, was shown by Professor 
Paley and other writers* to contain many serious errors 
and omissions, though it involved no personal question ; 
but I imagine him to have been more or less hébéé when 
he wrote this book. On the whole I should doubt his 
having been a better observer of nature than nine country 
gentlemen out of ten who have a taste for natural history. 
Presumptuous as I am aware it must appear to say so, 
Iam unable to see more than average intellectual power 
even in Mr. Darwin’s later books. His great contribution 
to science is supposed to have been the theory of natural 
selection, but enough has been said to show that this, if 
understood as he ought to have meant it to be understood, 
cannot be rated highly as an intellectual achievement. 
His other most important contribution was his provisional 
theory of pan-genesis, which is admitted on all hands tohave 
been a failure. Though, however, it is not likely that pos- 
terity will consider him as a man of transcendent intellec- 
tual power, he must be admitted to have been richly 
endowed with a much more valuable quality than either 
* See Professor Paley, ‘‘ Fraser,” Jan., 1882, ‘‘ Science Gossip,” 
Nos. 162, 163, June and July, 1878, and ‘‘ Nature,” Jan. 3, Jan. 10, 
Feb. 28, and March 27, 1884. 
