I suppose Mr. Darwin must mean), so very imperfect, that it might as
well have been left unwritten for all the help it gave the reader to
see the true question at issue between the original propounders of
the theory of evolution and Mr. Charles Darwin himself.

That question is this: Whether variation is in the main attributable
to a known general principle, or whether it is not?--whether the
minute variations whose accumulation results in specific and generic
differences are referable to something which will ensure their
appearing in a certain definite direction, or in certain definite
directions, for long periods together, and in many individuals, or
whether they are not?--whether, in a word, these variations are in
the main definite or indefinite?

It is observable that the leading men of science seem rarely to
understand this even now. I am told that Professor Huxley, in his
recent lecture on the coming of age of the "Origin of Species," never
so much as alluded to the existence of any such division of opinion
as this. He did not even, I am assured, mention "natural selection,"
but appeared to believe, with Professor Tyndall, {10a} that
"evolution" is "Mr. Darwin's theory." In his article on evolution in
the latest edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," I find only a
veiled perception of the point wherein Mr. Darwin is at variance with
his precursors. Professor Huxley evidently knows little of these
writers beyond their names; if he had known more, it is impossible he
should have written that "Buffon contributed nothing to the general
doctrine of evolution," {10b} and that Erasmus Darwin, "though a
zealous evolutionist, can hardly be said to have made any real
advance on his predecessors." {11} The article is in a high degree
unsatisfactory, and betrays at once an amount of ignorance and of