ell in this
country. Dr. Darwin is as reticent about teleology as Buffon, and
presumably for the same reason, but the evidence in favour of design was
too obvious; Paley, therefore, with his usual keen-sightedness seized
upon this weak point, and had the battle all his own way, for Dr. Darwin
died the same year as that in which the 'Natural Theology' appeared. The
unfortunate failure to see that evolution involves design and purpose as
necessarily and far more intelligibly than the theological view of
creation, has retarded our perception of many important facts for
three-quarters of a century.

However this may be, Dr. Darwin's name has been but little before the
public during the controversies of the last thirty years. Mr. Charles
Darwin, indeed, in the "historical sketch" which he has prefixed to the
later editions of his 'Origin of Species,' says, "It is curious how
largely my grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, anticipated the views and
erroneous grounds of opinion of Lamarck in his 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. pp.
500-510, published in 1794."[155] And a few lines lower Mr. Darwin adds,
"It is rather a singular instance of the manner in which similar views
arise at about the same time, that Goethe in Germany, and Geoffroy St.
Hilaire (as we shall immediately see) in France, came to the same
conclusion on the 'Origin of Species' in the years 1794-1796."
Acquaintance with Buffon's work will explain much of the singularity,
while those who have any knowledge of the writings of Dr. Darwin and
Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire will be aware that neither would admit the
other as "coming to the same conclusion," or even nearly so, as himself.
Dr. Darwin goes beyond his successor, Lamarck, while Etienne Geoffroy
does not even go so far as Dr. Darwin's predecessor, Buffon, had thought
fit to let himself be known as going. I have found no other reference to
Dr. Darwin in the 'Origin of Species,' except the two just given from
the same note. In the first edition I find no mention of him.

The chief fault to be found with Dr. Darwin's treatise on evolution is
that there is not enough of it; what there is, so far from being
"erroneous," is admirable. But so great a subject should have had a book
to itself, and not a mere fraction of a book. If his opponents, not
venturing to dispute with him, passed over one book in silence, he
should have followed it up with another, and another, and another, year
by year, as Buffon and Lamarck did; it is onl