It is indisputable that this has been the case; nor is it less indisputable that the works of Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace have been the main agents in the change that has been brought about in our opinions. The names of Cobden and Bright do not stand more prominently forward in connection with the repeal of the Corn Laws than do those of Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace in connection with the general acceptance of the theory of evolution. There is no living philosopher who has anything like Mr. Darwin’s popularity with Englishmen generally; and not only this, but his power of fascination extends all over Europe, and indeed in every country in which civilisation has obtained footing: not among the illiterate masses, though these are rapidly following the suit of the educated classes, but among experts and those who are most capable of judging. France, indeed—the country of Buffon and Lamarck—must be counted an exception to the general rule, but in England and Germany there are few men of scientific reputation who do not accept Mr. Darwin as the founder of what is commonly called “Darwinism,” and regard him as perhaps the most penetrative and profound philosopher of modern times. To quote an example from the last few weeks only, {2} I have observed that Professor Huxley has celebrated the twenty-first year since the “Origin of Species” was published by a lecture at the Royal Institution, and am told that he described Mr. Darwin’s candour as something actually “terrible” (I give Professor Huxley’s own word, as reported by one who heard it); and on opening a small book entitled “Degeneration,” by Professor Ray Lankester, published a few days before these lines were written, I find the following passage amid more that is to the same purport:— “Suddenly one of those great guesses which occasionally appear in the history of science was given to the science of biology by the imaginative insight of that greatest of living naturalists—I would say that greatest of living men—Charles Darwin.”—_Degeneration_, p. 10. This is very strong language, but it is hardly stronger than that habitually employed by the leading men of science when they speak of Mr. Darwin. To go farther afield, in February 1879 the Germans devoted an entire number of one of their scientific periodicals {3} to the celebration of Mr. Darwin’s seventieth birthday. There is no other Englishman now living who has been able to win such a compliment as this from foreigners, who should be disinterested judges.