Some apology is due to the reader for the reproduction of the "Lectures to Working Men" in their original state. They were taken down in shorthand by Mr. J. Aldous Mays, who requested me to allow him to print them. I was very much pressed with work at the time; and, as I could not revise the reports, which I imagined, moreover, would be of little or no interest to any but my auditors, I stipulated that a notice should be prefixed to that effect. This was done; but it did not prevent a considerable diffusion of the little book in this country and in the United States, nor its translation into more than one foreign language. Moreover Mr. Darwin often urged me to revise and expand the lectures into a systematic popular exposition of the topics of which they treat. I have more than once set about the task: but the proverb about spoiling a horn and not making a spoon, is particularly applicable to attempts to remodel a piece of work which may have served its immediate purpose well enough. So I have reprinted the lectures as they stand, with all their imperfections on their heads. It would seem that many people must have found them useful thirty years ago; and, though the sixties appear now to be reckoned by many of the rising generation as a part of the dark ages, I am not without some grounds for suspecting that there yet remains a fair sprinkling even of "philosophic thinkers" to whom it may be a profitable, perhaps even a novel, task to descend from the heights of speculation and go over the A B C of the great biological problem as it was set before a body of shrewd artisans at that remote epoch. T. H. H. Hodeslea, Eastbourne, _April 7th_, 1893. CONTENTS I THE DARWINIAN HYPOTHESIS [1859] II THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES [1860] III CRITICISM ON "THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES" [1864] IV THE GENEALOGY OF ANIMALS [1869] V MR. DARWIN'S CRITICS [1871] VI EVOLUTION IN BIOLOGY [1878] VII THE COMING OF AGE OF "THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES" [1880] VIII CHARLES DARWIN [1882] IX THE DARWIN MEMORIAL [1885] X OBITUARY [1888] XI SIX LECTURES TO WORKING MEN "ON OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE CAUSES OF THE PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE" [1863] I THE DARWINIAN HYPOTHESIS [1859]