doubt due to this fact
that he and Mr. Darwin elaborated their famous theory at the same time,
and independently of one another. I shall have occasion in the course of
the following article to show how misled and misleading both these
distinguished men have been, in spite of their unquestionable familiarity
with the whole range of animal and vegetable phenomena. I believe it
will be more respectful to both of them to do this in the most out-spoken
way. I believe their work to have been as mischievous as it has been
valuable, and as valuable as it has been mischievous; and higher, whether
praise or blame, I know not how to give. Nevertheless I would in the
outset, and with the utmost sincerity, admit concerning Messrs. Wallace
and Darwin that neither can be held as the more profound and
conscientious thinker; neither can be put forward as the more ready to
acknowledge obligation to the great writers on evolution who had preceded
him, or to place his own developments in closer and more conspicuous
historical connection with earlier thought upon the subject; neither is
the more ready to welcome criticism and to state his opponent's case in
the most pointed and telling way in which it can be put; neither is the
more quick to encourage new truth; neither is the more genial, generous
adversary, or has the profounder horror of anything even approaching
literary or scientific want of candour; both display the same inimitable
power of putting their opinions forward in the way that shall best ensure
their acceptance; both are equally unrivalled in the tact that tells them
when silence will be golden, and when on the other hand a whole volume of
facts may be advantageously brought forward. Less than the foregoing
tribute both to Messrs. Darwin and Wallace I will not, and more I cannot
pay.

Let us now turn to the most authoritative exponent of latter-day
evolution--I mean to Mr. Wallace, whose work, entitled "Darwinism,"
though it should have been entitled "Wallaceism," is still so far
Darwinistic that it develops the teaching of Mr. Darwin in the direction
given to it by Mr. Darwin himself--so far, indeed, as this can be
ascertained at all--and not in that of Lamarck. Mr. Wallace tells us, on
the first page of his preface, that he has no intention of dealing even
in outline with the vast subject of evolution in general, and has only
tried to give such an account of the theory of natural selection as may
facilitate a clear c