1 359-] 



PROGRESS OF OPINION. 



237 



C. Darwin to C. Lyell. 



Ilkley, Yorkshire, 



December 2nd [1859]. 



My DEAR Lyell, Every note which you have sent me has 

 interested me much. Pray thank Lady Lyell for her remark. 

 In the chapters she refers to, I was unable to modify the pas- 

 sage in accordance to your suggestion ; but in the final 

 chapter I have modified three or four. Kingsley, in a note * 

 to me, had a capital paragraph on such notions as mine being 

 not opposed to a high conception of the Deity. I have inserted 

 it as an extract from a letter to me from a celebrated author 

 and divine. I have put in about nascent organs. I had the 

 greatest difficulty in partially making out Sedgwick's letter, and 

 I dare say I did greatly underrate its clearness. Do what I 

 could, I fear I shall be greatly abused. In answer to Sedg- 

 wick's remark that my book would be " mischievous," I asked 

 him whether truth can be known except by being victorious 

 over all attacks. But it is no use. H. C. Watson tells me 

 that one zoologist says he will read my book, " but I will never 

 believe it." What a spirit to read any book in ! Crawford 

 writes to me that his notice f will be hostile, but that " he will 

 not calumniate the author." He says he has read my book, 

 " at least such parts as he could understand." He sent me 

 some notes and suggestions (quite unimportant), and they 

 show me that I have unavoidably done harm to the subject, 

 by publishing an abstract. He is a real Pallasian ; nearly all 

 our domestic races descended from a multitude of wild species 

 now commingled. I expected Murchison to be outrageous. 



* The letter is given at Vol. II. 

 p. 287. 



f John Crawford, orientalist, eth- 

 nologist, &c, b. 1783, d. 1868. The 

 review appeared in the Examiner, 

 and, though hostile, is free from 

 bigotry, as the following citation 

 will show : " We cannot help saying 



that piety must be fastidious indeed 

 that objects to a theory the ten- 

 dency of which is to show that all 

 organic beings, man included, are 

 in a perpetual progress of ameliora- 

 tion, and that is expounded in the 

 reverential language which we have 

 quoted." 



