Presumptuous as I am aware it must appear to say so, I am unable to see more than average intellectual power even in Mr. Darwin’s later books. His great contribution to science is supposed to have been the theory of natural selection, but enough has been said to show that this, if understood as he ought to have meant it to be understood, cannot be rated highly as an intellectual achievement. His other most important contribution was his provisional theory of pan-genesis, which is admitted on all hands to have been a failure. Though, however, it is not likely that posterity will consider him as a man of transcendent intellectual power, he must be admitted to have been richly endowed with a much more valuable quality than either originality or literary power—I mean with _savoir faire_. The cards he held—and, on the whole, his hand was a good one—he played with judgment; and though not one of those who would have achieved greatness under any circumstances, he nevertheless did achieve greatness of no mean order. Greatness, indeed, of the highest kind—that of one who is without fear and without reproach—will not ultimately be allowed him, but greatness of a rare kind can only be denied him by those whose judgment is perverted by temper or personal ill-will. He found the world believing in fixity of species, and left it believing—in spite of his own doctrine—in descent with modification. I have said on an earlier page that Mr. Darwin was heir to a discredited truth, and left behind him an accredited fallacy. This is true as regards men of science and cultured classes who understood his distinctive feature, or thought they did, and so long as Mr. Darwin lived accepted it with very rare exceptions; but it is not true as regards the unreading, unreflecting public, who seized the salient point of descent with modification only, and troubled themselves little about the distinctive feature. It would almost seem as if Mr. Darwin had reversed the usual practice of philosophers and given his esoteric doctrine to the world, while reserving the exoteric for his most intimate and faithful adherents. This, however, is a detail; the main fact is, that Mr. Darwin brought us all round to evolution. True, it was Mr. Darwin backed by the _Times_ and the other most influential organs of science and culture, but it was one of Mr. Darwin’s great merits to have developed and organised this backing, as part of the work which he knew was essential if so great a revolution was to be effected.