“It is probable that in the future, while a formal acceptance of Darwinism becomes general, the special theory of natural selection will be thoroughly understood and assimilated only by the more abstract and philosophical minds.” By the kind of people, in fact, who read the _Spectator_ and are called thoughtful; and in point of fact less than a twelvemonth after this passage was written, natural selection was publicly abjured as “a theory of the origin of species” by Mr. Romanes himself, with the implied approval of the _Times_. “Thus,” continues Mr. Allen, “the name of Darwin will often no doubt be tacked on to what are in reality the principles of Lamarck.” It requires no great power of prophecy to foretell this, considering that it is done daily by nine out of ten who call themselves Darwinians. Ask ten people of ordinary intelligence how Mr. Darwin explains the fact that giraffes have long necks, and nine of them will answer “through continually stretching them to reach higher and higher boughs.” They do not understand that this is the Lamarckian view of evolution, not the Darwinian; nor will Mr. Allen’s book greatly help the ordinary reader to catch the difference between the two theories, in spite of his frequent reference to Mr. Darwin’s “distinctive feature,” and to his “master-key.” No doubt the British public will get to understand all about it some day, but it can hardly be expected to do so all at once, considering the way in which Mr. Allen and so many more throw dust in its eyes, and will doubtless continue to throw it as long as an honest penny is to be turned by doing so. Mr. Allen, then, is probably right in saying that “the name of Darwin will no doubt be often tacked on to what are in reality the principles of Lamarck,” nor can it be denied that Mr. Darwin, by his practice of using “the theory of natural selection” as though it were a synonym for “the theory of descent with modification,” contributed to this result. I do not myself doubt that he intended to do this, but Mr. Allen would say no less confidently he did not. He writes of Mr. Darwin as follows:— “Of Darwin’s pure and exalted moral nature no Englishman of the present generation can trust himself to speak with becoming moderation.” He proceeds to trust himself thus:— “His love of truth, his singleness of heart, his sincerity, his earnestness, his modesty, his candour, his absolute sinking of self and selfishness—these, indeed are all conspicuous to every reader on the very face of every word he ever printed.” This “conspicuous sinking of self” is of a piece with the “delightful unostentatiousness _which every one must have noticed_” about which Mr. Allen writes on page 65. Does he mean that Mr. Darwin was “ostentatiously unostentatious,” or that he was “unostentatiously ostentatious”? I think we may guess from this passage who it was that in the old days of the _Pall Mall Gazelle_ called Mr. Darwin “a master of a certain happy simplicity.”