1885.] 
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ANALYSES OF BOOKS. 
English Worthies. Edited by Andrew Lang. 
Charles Darwin. By Grant Allen. London : Longmans, 
Green, and Co. 
Years must pass before Charles Darwin’s exaift position in the 
history of science can be definitely and finally established. At 
present disputes concerning his merit and even his personal 
character are still raging. If he is no longer assailed by the 
organs of religious opinion, as in the years immediately suc- 
ceeding the appearance of the “Origin of Species” and the 
“ Descent of Man,” it must not be supposed that he everywhere 
meets with due honour and appreciation. The anti-Darwinian 
warfare has been taken up by authors who, whatever else may be 
their motive, certainly do not speak in the name and in the 
interests of Christianity, for which some of them do not care a 
straw. In view, therefore, of the writings of Mr. Samuel Butler 
and Mr. Oswald Dawson, it is well that a full and fair exposition 
of the views, the methods, and the merits of our great English 
biologist should be laid before the public. 
Such an exposition will be found in the work before us. Its 
author, Mr. Grant Allen, is not merely an evolutionist in the 
wider sense of the term. He is a Darwinian of the Darwinians 
— an orthodox believer in natural selection. That whatever he 
knows and believes he can clothe in pellucid language, not 
merely intelligible but fascinating to the great “ educated and 
respectable ” classes, will be readily admitted by all persons who 
are familiar with his numerous contributions to periodical litera- 
ture. Accordingly we meet in this volume little, perhaps, which 
is novel, profound, or suggestive, but abundance of thoughts 
expressed with a singular felicity. In the very outset he reminds 
the reader of what many fail to see, that a great man has, so to 
speak, a two-fold line of ancestry — his bodily parents, grand- 
parents, and more remote ancestors from whom he derives his 
personal qualifications, and, on the other hand, his forerunners, 
or, as Mr. Allen calls them, “his intelleaual and moral ancestors, 
the thinkers and workers who have preceded him in his own 
department of thought.” All this, and its corollaries, are known, 
of course, to every refledlive mind, but few could have expressed 
this important truth so happily as it may be found in the book 
before us. 
Starting from this basis, Mr. Allen combats the popular mis- 
