And they presently found themselves so cut off by this specialization
from the majority who knew Darwin only by his spurious reputation, that
they were obliged to distinguish themselves, not as Darwinians, but as
Neo-Darwinians.
Before ten more years had elapsed, the Neo-Darwinians were practically
running current Science. It was 1906; I was fifty; I published my own
view of evolution in a play called Man and Superman; and I found that
most people were unable to understand how I could be an Evolutionist
and not a Neo-Darwinian, or why I habitually derided Neo-Darwinism as
a ghastly idiocy, and would fall on its professors slaughterously in
public discussions. It was in the hope of making me clear the matter up
that the Fabian Society, which was then organizing a series of lectures
on Prophets of the Nineteenth Century, asked me to deliver a lecture
on the prophet Darwin. I did so; and scraps of that lecture, which was
never published, variegate these pages.
POLITICAL INADEQUACY OF THE HUMAN ANIMAL
Ten more years elapsed. Neo-Darwinism in politics had produced a
European catastrophe of a magnitude so appalling, and a scope so
unpredictable, that as I write these lines in 1920, it is still far from
certain whether our civilization will survive it.
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