1885.] 
Mr. Darwin's Masterpiece. 
443 
(C 
( ( 
• W V Ch ? ere and tbere breaks out in the Origin of Species ” 
!”,V eged , C0 , ntra J t t0 the fatness of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s 
\vntings, but rather to enquire— Is the work a finished edi- 
Hnorrvjf ’ ^ c °h^! ent . w h°l e ? we frequently encounter 
dogmatism, petitw frinapii , &c. ? Are courtesy to opponents 
cuousT & reCOgnitlon of predecessors everywhere conspi- 
„ T h f °ZT n ° f . S P ecies is not a finished edifice. It is an 
anstiact. Nine years after its publication the first in- 
stalment of the work proper appeared, and the succeeding 
fourteen years of Mr. Darwin’s life did not witness the 
lansition of either of the two remaining instalments from 
a manuscript to a published existence. The work was, 
notwithstanding, “ nearly finished ” in 1859 (P- 1).* “ The 
f( cause (thereof] is well-known to have been the continued 
<( P r f essu1 ^ of ill-health,” writes one. “ Perhaps the greater 
interest of new experimental work” supplemented the 
cause of ill-health, says another ; while a third relates that 
so successful was the work that Mr. Darwin did not find it 
necessary to publish all the volumes of accumulated fadts 
which he had intended to supply byway of evidence.” 
hut inasmuch as two editions of the Descent of Man, 
publication of which ” Mr. Wallace tells us “ was not 
• ? n n 1C i pat i ed ltS author three years before,” betoken no 
intellectual collapse ; and inasmuch as the Descent of Man 
is not experimental work, one prefers to rejedt the former 
solution ; especially when we learn that Mr. Darwin told 
1 lot. John Fiske that “ it seemed no longer so necessary as 
xt ad °, n . ce seeme( i ” to publish the remaining volumes. 
„ N ow while “ no one,” says Mr. Darwin, “ can feel more 
sensible than I do of the necessity of hereafter publishing 
<( detail all the fadts, with references, on which my conclu- 
sions have been grounded ” (p. 2), some may suspedt that 
the inteiests of many of those conclusions were not preju- 
dicially affedted by the abandonment of the enterprise ; for 
concerning the Variation under Domestication reasons will be 
given in the following section for endorsing the opinion of 
Di. Mivart that it is “somewhat problematical how far” 
this work is calculated to favour Mr. Darwin’s dodtrines, 
while concerning the Variation under Nature considerations 
will be mentioned rendering it probable that, in some 
* The title, Origin of Species, will be omitted throughout. The edition 
quoted from is the sixth, with additions and corredtions to 1S72, in every instance 
when not otherwise specified. Pages preceded by the numerals i. or ii. refer 
to the first or second volume of the Variation of Animals and Plants tinier 
Domestication, second edition, revised, 1S75. 
2 Ii 2 
