detail escaped him provided it was small enough; it is incredible
that he should have allowed this paragraph to remain from first to
last unchanged (except for the introduction of the words "by the
Creator," which are wanting in the first edition) if they did not
convey the conception he most wished his readers to retain. Even if
in his first edition he had failed to see that he was abandoning in
his last paragraph all that it had been his ostensible object most
especially to support in the body of his book, he must have become
aware of it long before he revised the "Origin of Species" for the
last time; still he never altered it, and never put us on our guard.

It was not Mr. Darwin's manner to put his reader on his guard; we
might as well expect Mr. Gladstone to put us on our guard about the
Irish land bills. Caveat lector seems to have been his motto. Mr.
Spencer, in the articles already referred to, is at pains to show
that Mr. Darwin's opinions in later life underwent a change in the
direction of laying greater stress on functionally produced
modifications, and points out that in the sixth edition of the
"Origin of Species" Mr. Darwin says, "I think there can be no doubt
that use in our domestic animals has strengthened and enlarged
certain parts, and disuse diminished them;" whereas in his first
edition he said, "I think there can be LITTLE doubt" of this. Mr.
Spencer also quotes a passage from "The Descent of Man," in which
Mr. Darwin said that EVEN IN THE FIRST EDITION of the "Origin of
Species" he had attributed great effect to function, as though in
the later ones he had attributed still more; but if there was any
considerable change of position, it should not have been left to be
toilsomely collected by collation of editions, and comparison of
passages far removed from one another in other books. If his mind
had undergone the modification supposed by Mr. Spencer, Mr. Darwin