most intimate and faithful adherents.  This, however, is a detail; the main fact is, that Mr. Darwin brought us all round to evolution.  True, it was Mr. Darwin backed by the Times and the other most influential organs of science and culture, but it was one of Mr. Darwin’s great merits to have developed and organised this backing, as part of the work which he knew was essential if so great a revolution was to be effected.

This is an exceedingly difficult and delicate thing to do.  If people think they need only write striking and well-considered books, and that then the Times will immediately set to work to call attention to them, I should advise them not to be too hasty in basing action upon this hypothesis.  I should advise them to be even less hasty in basing it upon the assumption that to secure a powerful literary backing is a matter within the compass of any one who chooses to undertake it.  No one who has not a strong social position should ever advance a new theory, unless a life of hard fighting is part of what he lays himself out for.  It was one of Mr. Darwin’s great merits that he had a strong social position, and had the good sense to know how to profit by it.  The magnificent feat which he eventually achieved was unhappily tarnished by much that detracts from the splendour that ought to have attended it, but a magnificent feat it must remain.

Whose work in this imperfect world is not tarred and tarnished by something that detracts from its ideal character?  It is enough that a man should be the right man in the right place, and this Mr. Darwin pre-eminently was.  If he had been more like the ideal character which Mr. Allen endeavours to represent him, it is not likely that he would have been able to do as much, or nearly as much, as he actually did; he would have been too wide a cross with his generation to produce much effect upon it.  Original thought is much more common than is generally believed.  Most people, if they only knew it, could write a good book or play, paint a good picture, compose a fine oratorio; but it takes an unusually able person to get the book well reviewed, persuade a manager to bring the play out, sell the picture, or compass the performance of the oratorio; indeed, the more vigorous and original any one of these things may be, the more difficult will it prove to even bring it before the notice of the public.  The error of most original people is in being just a trifle too original.  It was in his business qualities—­and these, after all, are the most essential to success, that Mr. Darwin showed himself so superlative.  These are not only the most essential to success, but it is only by blaspheming the world in a way which no good citizen of the world will do, that we can deny them to be the ones which should most command our admiration.  We are in the world; surely so long as we are in it we should be of it, and not give ourselves airs as though we were too good for our generation, and would lay ourselves out to please any other by preference.  Mr. Darwin played for his own generation, and he got in the very amplest measure the recognition which he endeavoured, as we all do, to obtain.