s well? For our part we decline to commit ourselves, and
prefer to observe, as Mr. Butler observes of Von Hartmann, that if his
meaning is anything like what he says it is, we can only say that it has
not been given us to form any definite conception whatever as to what
that meaning may be."--'Academy,' May 17, 1879, Signed Grant Allen.

* * * * *

Here is another criticism of "Evolution, Old and New"--also, I believe I
am warranted in saying, by Mr. Grant Allen. These two criticisms
appeared on the same day; how many more Mr. Allen may have written later
on I do not know.

We find the writer who in the 'Academy' declares that he has been left
without "a single clear idea" as to what 'Evolution, Old and New,' has
been driving at saying on the same day in the 'Examiner' that
'Evolution, Old and New,' "has a more evident purpose than any of its
predecessors." If so, I am afraid the predecessors must have puzzled Mr.
Allen very unpleasantly. What the purpose of 'Evolution, Old and New,'
is, he proceeds to explain:--

"As to his (Mr. Butler's) main argument, it comes briefly to this:
natural selection does not originate favourable varieties, it only
passively permits them to exist; therefore it is the unknown cause which
produced the variations, not the natural selection which spared them,
that ought to count as the mainspring of evolution. That unknown cause
Mr. Butler boldly declares to be the will of the organism itself. An
intelligent ascidian wanted a pair of eyes,[376] so set to work and made
itself a pair, exactly as a man makes a microscope; a talented fish
conceived the idea of walking on dry land, so it developed legs, turned
its swim bladder into a pair of lungs, and became an amphibian; an
aesthetic guinea-fowl admired bright colours, so it bought a paint-box,
studied Mr. Whistler's ornamental designs, and, painting itself a gilded
and ocellated tail, was thenceforth a peacock. But how about plants? Mr.
Butler does not shirk even this difficulty. The theory must be
maintained at all hazards.... This is the sort of mystical nonsense
from which we had hoped Mr. Darwin had for ever saved us."--'Examiner,'
May 17, 1879.

* * * * *

In this last article, Mr. Allen has said that I am a man of genius,
"with the unmistakable signet-mark upon my forehead." I have been
subjected to a good deal of obloquy and misrepresentation at one time or
another, but this passage by Mr.