y thus that men can expect
to succeed against vested interests. Dr. Darwin could speak with a
freedom that was denied to Buffon. He took Buffon at his word as well as
he could, and carried out his principles to what he conceived to be
their logical conclusion. This was doubtless what Buffon had desired and
reckoned on, but, as I have said already, I question how far Dr. Darwin
understood Buffon's humour; he does not present any of the phenomena of
having done so, and therefore I am afraid he must be said to have missed
it.

Like Buffon, Dr. Darwin had no wish to see far beyond the obvious; he
missed good things sometimes, but he gained more than he lost; he knew
that it is always on the margin, as it were, of the self-evident that
the greatest purchase against the nearest difficulty is obtainable. His
life was not one of Herculean effort, but, like the lives of all those
organisms that are most likely to develop and transmit a useful
modification, it was one of well-sustained activity; it was a
long-continued keeping open of the windows of his own mind, much after
the advice he gave to the Nottingham weavers. Dr. Darwin knew, and, I
imagine, quite instinctively, that nothing tends to oversight like
overseeing. He does not trouble himself about the origin of life; as
for the perceptions and reasoning faculties of animals and plants, it is
enough for him that animals and plants do things which we say involve
sensation and consciousness when we do them ourselves or see others do
them. If, then, plants and animals appear as if they felt and
understood, let the matter rest there, and let us say they feel and
understand--being guided by the common use of language, rather than by
any theories concerning brain and nervous system. If any young writer
happens to be in want of a subject, I beg to suggest that he may find
his opportunity in a 'Philosophy of the Superficial.'

Though Dr. Darwin was more deeply impressed than Buffon with the oneness
of personality between parents and offspring, so that these latter are
not "new" creatures, but "elongations of the parents," and hence "may
retain some of the habits of the parent system," he did not go on to
infer definitely all that he might easily have inferred from such a
pregnant premiss. He did not refer the repetition by offspring, of
actions which their parents have done for many generations, but which
they can never have seen those parents do, to the memory (in the strict
sens