178 FOUNDATIONS OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, [ch. ix. 



scientific public, it seems truly remarkable how so many of 

 them could have failed to see their right road sooner. 

 How could Sir C. Lyell, for instance, for thirty years 

 read, write, and think, on the subject of species and 

 their succession, and yet constantly look down the wrong 

 road ! 



" A quarter of a century ago, you and I must have been 

 in something like the same state of mind on the main ques- 

 tion. But you were able to see and work out the quo modo 

 of the succession, the all-important thing, while I failed to 

 grasp it." 



In his earlier attitude towards evolution, my father was 

 on a par with his contemporaries. He wrote in the Auto- 

 biography : 



" I occasionally sounded not a few naturalists, and never 

 happened to come across a single one who seemed to doubt 

 about the permanence of species : " and it will be made 

 abundantly clear by his letters that in supporting the op- 

 posite view he felt himself a terrible heretic. 



Mr. Huxley * writes in the same sense : 

 " Within the ranks of biologists, at that time [1851-58], 

 I met with nobody, except Dr. Grant, of University College, 

 who had a word to say for Evolution and his advocacy was 

 not calculated to advance the cause. Outside these ranks, 

 the only person known to me whose knowledge and capacity 

 compelled respect, and who was, at the same time, a 

 thoroughgoing evolutionist, was Mr. Herbert Spencer, whose 

 acquaintance I made, I think, in 1852, and then entered 

 into the bonds of a friendshijo which, Pam happy to think, 

 has known no interruption. Many and prolonged were the 

 battles we fought on this topic. But even my friend's rare 

 dialectic skill and copiousness of apt illustration could not 

 drive me from my agnostic position. I took my stand upon 

 two grounds : firstly, that up to that time, the evidence in 

 favour of transmutation was wholly insufficient ; and, 

 secondly, that no suggestion respecting the causes of the 

 transmutation assumed, which had been made, was in any 

 way adequate to explain the phenomena. Looking back at 

 the state of knowledge at that time, I really do not see that 

 any other conclusion was justifiable." 



These two last citations refer of course to a period much 

 later than the time, 1836-37, at which the Darwinian theory 



* Life and Letters, vol. ii. p. 188. 



