Chapter 3

How I came to write "Evolution, Old and New"--Mr Darwin's "brief but imperfect" sketch of the opinions of the writers on evolution who had preceded him--The reception which "Evolution, Old and New," met with.

Though my book was out in 1877, it was not till January 1878 that I took an opportunity of looking up Professor Ray Lankester's account of Professor Hering's lecture. I can hardly say how relieved I was to find that it sprung no mine upon me, but that, so far as I could gather, Professor Hering and I had come to pretty much the same conclusion. I had already found the passage in Dr. Erasmus Darwin which I quoted in "Evolution, Old and New," but may perhaps as well repeat it here. It runs -

"Owing to the imperfection of language, the offspring is termed a new animal; but is, in truth, a branch or elongation of the parent, since a part of the embryon animal is or was a part of the parent, and, therefore, in strict language, cannot be said to be entirely new at the time of its production, and, therefore, it may retain some of the habits of the parent system." [26]

When, then, the Athenaeum reviewed "Life and Habit" (January 26, 1878), I took the opportunity to write to that paper, calling attention to Professor Hering's lecture, and also to the passage just quoted from Dr. Erasmus Darwin. The editor kindly inserted my letter in his issue of February 9, 1878. I felt that I had now done all in the way of acknowledgment to Professor Hering which it was, for the time, in my power to do.

I again took up Mr. Darwin's "Origin of Species," this time, I admit, in a spirit of scepticism. I read his "brief but imperfect" sketch of the progress of opinion on the origin of species, and turned to each one of the writers he had mentioned. First, I read all the parts of the "Zoonomia" that were not purely medical, and was astonished to find that, as Dr. Krause has since said in his essay on Erasmus Darwin, "HE WAS THE FIRST WHO PROPOSED AND PERSISTENTLY CARRIED OUT A WELL-ROUNDED THEORY WITH REGARD TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LIVING WORLD" [27] (italics in original).

This is undoubtedly the case, and I was surprised at finding Professor Huxley say concerning this very eminent man that he could "hardly be said to have made any real advance upon his predecessors." Still more was I surprised at remembering that, in the first edition of the "Origin of Species," Dr. Erasmus Darwin had never been so much as named; while in the "brief but imperfect" sketch he was dismissed with a line of half-contemptuous patronage, as though the mingled tribute of admiration and curiosity which attaches to scientific prophecies, as distinguished from discoveries, was the utmost he was entitled to. "It is curious," says Mr. Darwin innocently, in the middle of a note in the smallest possible