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.