I imagine complaint had early reached Mr. Darwin that the difference between himself and his predecessors was unsubstantial and hard to grasp; traces of some such feeling appear even in the late Sir Charles Lyell’s “Principles of Geology,” in which he writes that he had reprinted his abstract of Lamarck’s doctrine word for word, “in justice to Lamarck, in order to show how nearly the opinions taught by him at the beginning of this century resembled those now in vogue among a large body of naturalists respecting the infinite variability of species, and the progressive development in past time of the organic world.” { 205a} Sir Charles Lyell could not have written thus if he had thought that Mr. Darwin had already done “justice to Lamarck,” nor is it likely that he stood alone in thinking as he did. It is probable that more reached Mr. Darwin than reached the public, and that the historical sketch prefixed to all editions after the first six thousand copies had been sold—meagre and slovenly as it is—was due to earlier manifestation on the part of some of Mr. Darwin’s friends of the feeling that was afterwards expressed by Sir Charles Lyell in the passage quoted above. I suppose the removal of the my that was cut out in 1866 to be due partly to the Gladstonian tendencies of Mr. Darwin’s mind, which would naturally make that particular my at all times more or less offensive to him, and partly to the increase of objection to it that must have ensued on the addition of the “brief but imperfect” historical sketch in 1861; it is doubtless only by an oversight that this particular my was not cut out in 1861. The stampede of 1869 was probably occasioned by the appearance in Germany of Professor Haeckel’s “History of Creation.” This was published in 1868, and Mr. Darwin no doubt foresaw that it would be translated into English, as indeed it subsequently was. In this book some account is given—very badly, but still much more fully than by Mr. Darwin—of Lamarck’s work; and even Erasmus Darwin is mentioned—inaccurately—but still he is mentioned. Professor Haeckel says:—
“Although the theory of development had been already maintained at the beginning of this century by several great naturalists, especially by Lamarck and Goethe, it only received complete demonstration and causal foundation nine years ago through Darwin’s work, and it is on this account that it is now generally (though not altogether rightly) regarded as exclusively Mr. Darwin’s theory.” { 206a}