Page:Carroll Lane Fenton - Darwin and the Theory of Evolution.djvu/37

 34 it has been discarded in favor of later and more probable ideas.

The next important evolutionary work was the Descent of Man, published in February, 1871. Inasmuch as there is some misunderstanding as to the motive which forced Darwin to say but little of man in the Origin, and delay twelve years before publishing a book on the subject, it is worth while to give his own statement of the case:

… As soon as I had become, in the year 1837 or 1838, convinced that species were mutable productions, I could not avoid the belief that man must come under the same law. Accordingly I collected notes on the subject for my own satisfaction, and not for a long time with any intention of publishing. Although in the Origin of Species the derivation of any particular species is never discussed, yet I thought it best, in order that honourable man should accuse me of concealing my views, to add that by the work "light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history." It would have been useless and injurious to the success of the book to have paraded, without giving any evidence, my convinction with respect to origin.

But when I found that many naturalists fully accepted the doctrine of the evolution of species, it seemed to me advisable to work up such notes as I possessed, and to publish a special treatise on the origin of man. I was the more glad to do so, as it gave me an opportunity of fully discussing sexual selection—a subject which had always greatly interested me. This subject, and that of the varia-