264: THE SPREAD OF EVOLUTION. [ch. xiv. 



function of other imponderable force, I should be con- 

 vinced. If man was made of brass or iron and no way con- 

 nected with any other organism which had ever lived, I 

 should perhaps be convinced. But this is childish writ- 



" I have lately been corresponding with Lyell, who, I think, 

 adopts your idea of the stream of variation having been led 

 or designed. I have asked him (and he says he will hereafter 

 reflect and answer me) whether he believes that the shape of 

 my nose was designed. If he does I have nothing more to 

 say. If not, seeing what Fanciers have done by selecting 

 individual differences in the nasal bones of pigeons, I must 

 think that it is illogical to suppose that the variations, 

 which natural selection preserves for the good of any being, 

 have been designed. But I know that I am in the same 

 sort of muddle (as I have said before) as all the world seems 

 to be in with respect to free will, yet with everything sup- 

 posed to have been foreseen or preordained." 



The shape of his nose would perhaps not have been used 

 as an illustration, if he had remembered Fitz-Roy's objection 

 to that feature (see Autobiography, p. 26). He should, too, 

 have remembered the difficulty of predicting the value to an 

 organism of ah apparently unimportant character. 



In England Professor Huxley was at work in the evolu- 

 tionary cause. He gave, in 1862, two lectures at Edinburgh 

 on Man's Place in Nature. My father wrote : 



" I am heartily glad of your success in the North. By 

 Jove, you have attacked Bigotry in its stronghold. I thought 

 you would have been mobbed. I am so glad that you will 

 publish your Lectures. You seem to have kept a due 

 medium between extreme boldness and caution. I am 

 heartily glad that all went off so well." 



A review,* by F. W. Hutton, afterwards Professor of 

 Biology and Geology at Canterbury, N. Z., gave a hopeful 

 note of the time not far off when a broader view of the 

 argument for Evolution would be accepted. My father 

 wrote the author f : 



Down, April 20th, 1861. 



Dear Sir, I hope that you will permit me to thank you 

 for sending me a copy of your paper in the Geologist, and 



* Geologist, 1861, p. 132. 



t The letter is published in a lecture by Professor Hutton given before the 

 Philosoph. Institute, Canterbury, N.Z., Sept. 12th, 1887. 



