And
no living child had heard the name that has since obliterated Buffon's
in the popular consciousness: the name of Darwin.
Ten years elapsed. The celebrated Buffoon was forgotten; I had doubled
my years and my length; and I had discarded the religion of my
forefathers. One day the richest and consequently most dogmatic of my
uncles came into a restaurant where I was dining, and found himself,
much against his will, in conversation with the most questionable of his
nephews. By way of making myself agreeable, I spoke of modern thought
and Darwin. He said, 'Oh, thats the fellow who wants to make out that we
all have tails like monkeys.' I tried to explain that what Darwin had
insisted on in this connection was that some monkeys have no tails.
But my uncle was as impervious to what Darwin really said as any
Neo-Darwinian nowadays. He died impenitent, and did not mention me in
his will.
Twenty years elapsed. If my uncle had been alive, he would have known
all about Darwin, and known it all wrong. In spite of the efforts of
Grant Allen to set him right, he would have accepted Darwin as the
discoverer of Evolution, of Heredity, and of modification of species by
Selection.
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