6y8 
A nalyses of Books. 
[November, 
apprehension which regards Darwin as the discoverer and 
founder of the hypothesis of evolution, the first to suppose 
animal and vegetable forms to be the outcome, not of special, 
mechanical creation, but of slow modification in pre-existing 
organisms, and especially the first to suggest the possible descent 
of man from an ape-like ancestor. This position had, however, 
been previously taken by others, for instance, Buffon, and Darwin 
never for a moment represents himself as having been its origi- 
nator. His task was to show how descent with modifications 
might be effected — to make the theory of development com- 
prehensible and believable. 
Our author, in order to refute this misconception, gives a 
sketch of the evolutionary doCtrine as it was held by some of the 
most eminent naturalists prior to the avatar of Darwin. 
In this survey we find Lamarck characterised as “ a bold, 
acute, and vigorous thinker, trained in the great school of Diderot 
and D’Alembert, with something of the vivid Celtic poetic 
imagination, and a fearless habit of forming his own conclusions 
irrespective of common or preconceived ideas.” But has it 
never struck Mr. Allen what a large proportion of the opponents 
of Evolution in general, and of Darwinism in particular, are 
manifestly Celts ? How Celtic France, the western portion of 
Switzerland, Ireland, and Scotland, have remained strange or 
hostile to the new biological school ? 
Cuvier is characterised as “ a reactionary biological conserva- 
tive and obscurantist.” We submit that the term “ conser- 
vative ” is not happily chosen. “ Oken,” it is said, “was 
spinning in metaphysical Germany his fanciful parodies of the 
Lamarckian hypothesis.” Those who are familiar with Oken’s 
works in the original, and especially the few survivors of his 
pupils, will think that he here receives but scant justice. It is 
startling to refleCt how many of the most advanced conceptions 
of modern science lurk in germ in the strange and, at times, 
uncouth phraseology of his writings. But to return, in the 
account of Darwin’s early days we find some remarks which we 
can most heartily endorse. Thus : “ The boy was educated (so 
they call it) at Shrewsbury Grammar School, and there he picked 
up as much Latin and Greek as was then considered absolutely 
essential to the due production of an English gentleman. 
Happily for the world, having no taste for the classics, he 
escaped the ordeal with little injury to his individuality.” After 
a short stay at Edinburgh University, he proceeded to Christ’s 
College, Cambridge. “ The Darwins were luckily a Cambridge 
family : luckily, let us say, for had it been otherwise — had young 
Darwin been distorted from his native bent by Plato and Aristotle, 
and plunged deep into the mysteries of Barbara and Celarent, as 
would infallibly have happened to him at the sister university, 
who can tell how long we might have had to wait in vain for 
the “ Origin of Species ” and the “ Descent of Man ?” But 
