[December, 
726 An Exegesis of Darwinism. 
undertake the task than the fact that the colossal statue of 
Mr. Charles Darwin, hy Mr. Boehm, which is to he erected 
in the British Museum (Natural History), is nearly finished. 
At such an hour a definition of Darwinism, sufficiently 
succinct for mnemonical purposes and amply substantiated 
by copious quotations, may be especially useful. 
The word Darwinism has divers significations, and pro- 
bably to many persons a somewhat indefinite one. It may 
invoke the image of “ our cousin the gorilla ” rubbing off its 
tail by friction, or elicit a taunt that we cannot specify the 
whence of the nebulae. Some persons identify Darwinism 
with Natural Selection, others with Evolution, while Mr. 
Darwin’s approved epitomiser warns us that “ we must not 
confuse the Darwinian theory with Evolution for indeed 
we “cannot, strange as this may seem, call Charles Darwin 
an Evolutionist ” when rightly employing that term. In a 
pamphlet on “ England and Egypt ” Mr. B. Fossett Lock, 
of the Positivist School, “analysed the Liberal party . . . 
into four groups, . . . Whig, Nonconformist, Darwinian, 
and Positivist.” Long ago “ the expression ‘ Darwinism ’ 
(as employed for example by the poet Coleridge when 
writing on Stillingfleet) was accepted in England nearly as 
the antithesis of sober biological investigation.” Sir Wm. 
Thomson “ out-Darwined Darwin ” in suggesting the dis- 
persal of living germs from another planet. Prof. Huxley 
doubts if he can ever have seen one of Dr. St. George 
Mivart’s “ absolute and pure Darwinians ” alive. According 
to one critic Prof. Huxley “ is much more Darwinian than 
Mr. Darwin himself; ” according to another critic “ Darwin 
himself is not a good Darwinian,” inasmuch as “ Darwinism 
is becoming Owenism.” To these significations of Dar- 
winism must be added the following definition : — 
From one to at most ten ( vide Section 1, infra) pre- 
Cambrian (v. 2, infra ) presumably unicellular organisms 
(v. 3), created (v. 4) and vivified by the Creator’s breath 
(v. 5), have arisen without any subsequent interference (v. 6), 
and we can hardly believe otherwise than without beneficent 
guidance (v. 7), the structures and the bodily and mental 
(v. 8) activities of all organisms, by the accumulation, 
mainly by Natural Selection (v. 9), of variations so minute 
as to be appreciable only to well-trained eyes (v. 10), occur- 
ring in correlation but not in co-ordination with related vari- 
ations (v. n) affecting single individuals (v. 12), inducing 
intermittent modification (v. 13), and being determined in 
their nature by an innate idiosyncratic plasticity (v. 14), the 
chief ultimate cause of which is probably the accumulating 
