KEYIEWS. 
291 
THE FALLACIES OF DARWINISM.* 
T HE opponents of Darwinism are numerous enough, hut we may add by 
no means intelligent enough to do anything but help to extend Mr. 
Darwin’s views by bringing very feeble arguments against Darwinian views 
before people who are ignorant of the whole subject, but who are intelligent 
enough to perceive fallacies when put before them, and who, once they are 
called upon to consider whether man has descended from the other animals 
or has been separately and similarly made, very naturally conclude that the 
former is by far the most probable of the two. There is another quality, too, 
which the opponents of Darwinism possess, and which certainly by no means 
tends to render their arguments more convincing, and that is the faculty of 
abuse. In every chapter of their works there is a summing up in which 
they express their astonishment at the very existence of unbelievers, and 
that too in terms usually of the very coarsest abuse that can be conceived. 
How unlike the whole number of Mr. Darwin’s or Mr. Wallace’s books. In 
no single passage do they attempt to revile — as indeed they might most 
easily — the abortive and often absurd arguments of their opponents. Dr. 
Bree’s is a book of the ordinary class, an abusive review of Mr. Darwin’s 
theory, as unlike Mr. Mivart’s able essay as anything possible to conceive, 
and by no means to be placed alongside it or compared with it in any 
respect. Yet the author has not been without some reading on the point. 
He has found out the names of two or three naturalists of repute who do not 
hold the Darwinian doctrines, but he is by no means to be considered as 
having Professor Owen on his side, though he evidently considers that the 
distinguished naturalist leans towards his views. We may not call Pro- 
fessor Owen a Darwinian, but if we could take Mr. Darwin’s name from the 
doctrine, we doubt not Professor Owen would hold to it, for indeed he alleges 
that he put forward similar views quite thirty years since. Of the other 
names which Dr. Bree has got, we fail to see any of special importance in 
a zoological respect except Agassiz, though of course we could ourselves 
name some few more whom possibly Dr. Bree has never heard of. But if 
Dr. Bree were to ask to us to name those eminent masters of zoological 
science, which, at first opponents of Darwinism, have since become its 
firm supporters, he would doubtless be a little astonished at the multi- 
tude of European and American names we could put before him. The 
book is simply a series of bitter attacks on the views of Mr. Darwin, Pro- 
fessor Huxley, and the leading evolutionists of this country and the Con- 
tinent. Of course there is some reason given for not holding particular 
theories arising out of the main doctrine, but these are indeed few, and 
not particular; while the arguments of the author are of the old-womanish 
kind, and invariably end with allusion to the Creator, and an assertion that 
therefore the doctrine in question must be absurd, because it is out of har- 
mony with the author’s particular religious belief. Let us take a paragraph 
from the chapter in which the author exhibits his knowledge of Van Baer’s 
work. Here, after denying Mivart’s view, he says : — 
* 11 An Exposition of Fallacies in the Hypothesis of Mr. Darwin.” By 
C. R. Bree, M.D., F.L.S. London : Longmans, 1872. 
