igo ON THE RECEPTION OF 



in keeping alive a sort of pious conviction that Evolution, 

 after all, would turn out true. I have recently read afresh 

 the first edition of the 'Principles of Geology' ; and when I 

 consider that this remarkable book had been nearly thirty 

 years in everybody's hands, and that it brings home to any 

 reader of ordinary intelligence a great principle and a great 

 fact the principle, that the past must be explained by the 

 present, unless good cause be shown to the contrary ; and the 

 fact, that, so far as our knowledge of the past history of life 

 on our globe goes, no such cause can be r shown * I cannot 

 but believe that Lyell, for others, as for myself, was the chief 

 agent in smoothing the road for Darwin. For consistent 

 uniformitarianism postulates evolution as much in the organic 

 as in the inorganic world. The origin of a new species by 

 other than ordinary agencies would be a vastly greater 

 " catastrophe " than any of those which Lyell successfully 

 eliminated from sober geological speculation. 



In fact, no one was better aware of this than Lyell himself. f 

 If one reads any of the earlier editions of the ' Principles ' 

 carefully (especially by the light of the interesting series of 

 letters recently published by Sir Charles Lyell's biographer), it 

 is easy to see that, with all his energetic opposition to Lamarck, 



* The same principle and the which was beyond our comprehen- 



same fact guide and result from sion ; it remained for Darwin to 



all sound historical investigation. accumulate proof that there is no 



Grote's 'History of Greece ' is a break between the incoming and the 



product of the same intellectual outgoing species, that they are the 



movement as Lyell's ' Principles/ work of evolution, and not of special 



f Lyell, with perfect right, claims creation. . . . 

 this position for himself. He speaks "I had certainly prepared the 



of having "advocated a law of con- way in this country, in six editions 



tinuity even in the organic world, so of my work before the ' Vestiges of 



far as possible without adopting La- Creation' appeared in 1842 [1844], 



marck's theory of transmutation. . . . for the reception of Darwin's gradual 



" But while I taught that as often and insensible evolution of species." 



as certain forms of animals and ' Life and Letters,' Letter to 



plants disappeared, for reasons quite Haeckel, vol. ii. p. 436. Nov. 23, 



intelligible to us, others took their 1868. 

 place by virtue of a causation 



