24.6 Luck, or Cunning ? 
have been the kind of man to persuade us into first tolerat- 
ing, and then cordially accepting, descent with modifica- 
tion. There is a correlation of mental as well as of physical 
growth, and we could not probably have had one set of 
Mr. Darwin’s qualities without the other. If he had been 
more faultless, he might have written better books, but we 
should have listened worse. A book’s prosperity is like a 
jest’s—in the ear of him that hears it. 
Mr. Spencer would not—at least one cannot think he 
would—have been able to effect the revolution which will 
henceforth doubtless be connected with Mr. Darwin’s name. 
He had been insisting on evolution for some years before 
the ‘‘ Origin of Species”’ came out, but he might as well 
have preached to the winds, for all the visible effect that 
had been produced. On the appearance of Mr. Darwin’s 
book the effect was instantaneous ; it was like the change in 
the condition of a patient when the right medicine has been 
hit on after all sorts of things have been tried and failed. 
Granted that it was comparatively easy for Mr. Darwin, as 
having been born into the household of one of the prophets 
of evolution, to arrive at conclusions about the fixity of 
species which, if not so born, he might never have reached 
at all; this does not make it any easier for him to have 
got others to agree with him. Any one, again, may have 
money left him, or run up against it, or have it run up 
against him, as it does against some people, but it is only 
a very sensible person who does not lose it. Moreover, once 
begin to go behind achievement and there is an end of 
everything. Did the world give much heed to or believe in 
evolution before Mr. Darwin’s time ? Certainly not. Did 
we begin to attend and be persuaded soon after Mr. Darwin 
began to write ? Certainly yes. Did we ere long go over 
en masse? Assuredly. If, as I said in “ Life and Habit,” 
any one asks who taught the world to believe in evolution, 
the answer to the end of time must be that it was Mr. Darwin. 
And yet the more his work is looked at, the more marvellous 
