“That such an attempt should be made is an illustration of a curious weakness of humanity. Not infrequently, after a long contested cause has triumphed, and all have yielded allegiance thereto, you will find, when few generations have passed, that men have clean forgotten what and who it was that made that cause triumphant, and ignorantly will set up for honour the name of a traitor or an impostor, or attribute to a great man as a merit deeds and thoughts which he spent a long life in opposing.” Exactly so; that is what one rather feels, but surely Professor Ray Lankester should say “in trying to filch while pretending to oppose and to amend.” He is complaining here that people persistently ascribe Lamarck’s doctrine to Mr. Darwin. Of course they do; but, as I have already perhaps too abundantly asked, whose fault is this? If a man knows his own mind, and wants others to understand it, it is not often that he is misunderstood for any length of time. If he finds he is being misapprehended in a way he does not like, he will write another book and make his meaning plainer. He will go on doing this for as long time as he thinks necessary. I do not suppose, for example, that people will say I originated the theory of descent by means of natural selection from among fortunate accidents, or even that I was one of its supporters as a means of modification; but if this impression were to prevail, I cannot think I should have much difficulty in removing it. At any rate no such misapprehension could endure for more than twenty years, during which I continued to address a public who welcomed all I wrote, unless I myself aided and abetted the mistake. Mr. Darwin wrote many books, but the impression that Darwinism and evolution, or descent with modification, are identical is still nearly as prevalent as it was soon after the appearance of the “Origin of Species;” the reason of this is, that Mr. Darwin was at no pains to correct us. Where, in any one of his many later books, is there a passage which sets the matter in its true light, and enters a protest against the misconception of which Professor Ray Lankester complains so bitterly? The only inference from this is, that Mr. Darwin was not displeased at our thinking him to be the originator of the theory of descent with modification, and did not want us to know more about Lamarck than he could help. If we wanted to know about him, we must find out what he had said for ourselves, it was no part of Mr. Darwin’s business to tell us; he had no interest in our catching the distinctive difference between himself and that writer; perhaps not; but this approaches closely to wishing us to misunderstand it. When Mr. Darwin wished us to understand this or that, no one knew better how to show it to us.