Darwin's theory."
It must be remembered that the passage quoted above occurs on the
first page of a preface dated March, 1889, when the writer had
completed his task, and was most fully conversant with his subject.
Nevertheless, it seems indisputable either that he is still
confusing evolution with Mr. Darwin's theory, or that he does not
know when his sentences have point and when they have none.
I should perhaps explain to some readers that Mr. Darwin did not
modify the main theory put forward, first by Buffon, to whom it
indisputably belongs, and adopted from him by Erasmus Darwin,
Lamarck, and many other writers in the latter half of the eighteenth
century and the earlier years of the nineteenth. The early
evolutionists maintained that all existing forms of animal and
vegetable life, including man, were derived in course of descent
with modification from forms resembling the lowest now known.
Mr. Darwin went as far as this, and farther no one can go. The
point at issue between him and his predecessors involves neither the
main fact of evolution, nor yet the geometrical ratio of increase,
and the struggle for existence consequent thereon.
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