" Natural Selection " 47 



(page 28) : " The theory of Natural Selection is no more 

 able to explain all the varied phenomena of nature 

 than is Ricardo's assumption that all men are actuated 

 solely by the love of money capable of accounting for 

 the multifarious existing economic phenomena." " We 

 think (page 7) we may safely assert that scarcely ever 

 has a theory which fundamentally changed the pre- 

 vailing scientific beliefs met with less opposition. 

 It would have been a good thing for Zoology had Darwin 

 not obtained so easy a victory. . . . 



" Darwin thus became a dictator whose authority 

 none durst question. A crowd of slavish adherents 

 gathered round him, a herd of men to whom he seemed 

 an absolutely unquestionable authority. Darwinism 

 became a creed to which all must subscribe." 



It is interesting to note that just fifty years ago 

 Huxley wrote an article in the " Westminster Review " 

 from which Messrs. Dewar and Finn quote : " After 

 much consideration and with no bias against Mr. 

 Darwin's views, it is our clear conviction, that as the 

 evidence now stands, it is not absolutely proven that a 

 group of animals having all the characters exhibited 

 by species in nature, has ever been originated by 

 selection, whether natural or artificial." Fifty years 

 later I had the honour to write, in the same monthly, 

 an article on " Darwinism," which proved, I believe, 

 the truth of Paulin's law of the prevalence of " the 

 cannibal habit in the male " of all prolific species of 

 carnivora and herbivora, and, consequently, of "no 

 struggle for existence, of no survival of the fittest," 

 of the obliteration of all variation by the potent 

 influence of marriage, and of the survival of the average. 

 That which Huxley found could not be absolutely 

 proved was the cope-stone of the Darwinian structure, 

 and it is onlynow that we are able to appraise thoroughly 

 the fact that Huxley was — what Darwin unfortunately 



