As a matter of fact, he never realised Charles Darwin’s utter lack of sympathetic understanding of the work of his French precursors, let alone his own grandfather, Erasmus. Yet this practical ignorance, which to Butler was so strange as to transcend belief, was altogether genuine, and easy to realise when we recall the position of Natural Science in the early thirties in Darwin’s student days at Cambridge, and for a decade or two later. Catastropharianism was the tenet of the day: to the last it commended itself to his Professors of Botany and Geology,—for whom Darwin held the fervent allegiance of the Indian scholar, or _chela_, to his _guru_. As Geikie has recently pointed out, it was only later, when Lyell had shown that the breaks in the succession of the rocks were only partial and local, without involving the universal catastrophes that destroyed all life and rendered fresh creations thereof necessary, that any general acceptance of a descent theory could be expected. We may be very sure that Darwin must have received many solemn warnings against the dangerous speculations of the “French Revolutionary School.” He himself was far too busy at the time with the reception and assimilation of new facts to be awake to the deeper interest of far-reaching theories. It is the more unfortunate that Butler’s lack of appreciation on these points should have led to the enormous proportion of bitter personal controversy that we find in the remainder of his biological writings. Possibly, as suggested by George Bernard Shaw, his acquaintance and admirer, he was also swayed by philosophical resentment at that banishment of mind from the organic universe, which was generally thought to have been achieved by Charles Darwin’s theory. Still, we must remember that this mindless view is not implicit in Charles Darwin’s presentment of his own theory, nor was it accepted by him as it has been by so many of his professed disciples. * * * * *