1859.] lyell's congratulations. 207 



the most eminent naturalists have rejected the view of the 

 mutability of species ? You do not mean to ignore G. St. 

 Hilaire and Lamarck. As to the latter, you may say, that in 

 regard to animals you substitute natural selection for volition 

 to a certain considerable extent, but in his theory of the 

 changes of plants he could not introduce volition ; he may, 

 no doubt, have laid an undue comparative stress on changes 

 in physical conditions, and too little on those of contending 

 organisms. He at least was for the universal mutability of 

 species and for a genealogical link between the first and the 

 present. The men of his school also appealed to domestic- 

 ated varieties. (Do you mean living naturalists ?) * 



The first page of this most important summary gives the 

 adversary an advantage, by putting forth so abruptly and 

 crudely such a startling objection as the formation of "the 

 eye," not by means analogous to man's reason, or rather by 

 some power immeasurably superior to human reason, but 

 by superinduced variation like those of which a cattle-breeder 

 avails himself. Pages would be required thus to state an 

 objection and remove it. It would be better, as you wish to 

 persuade, to say nothing. Leave out several sentences, and 

 in a future edition bring it out more fully. Between the 

 throwing down of such a stumbling-block in the way of the 

 reader, and the passage to the working ants, in p. 460, there 

 ,are pages required ; and these ants are a bathos to him before 

 he has recovered from the shock of being called upon to 

 believe the eye to have been brought to perfection, from a 

 state of blindness or purblindness, by such variations as we 

 witness. I think a little omission would greatly lessen the 

 objectionableness of these sentences if you have not time to 

 recast and amplify. 



.... But these are small matters, mere spots on the sun. 

 Your comparison of the letters retained in words, when 



* In the published copies of the first edition, p. 480, the words are 

 "" eminent living naturalists." 



