242 ORIGIN OF SPECIES. [ch. xiii. 



(2.) I have gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble 

 a conception of Deity, to believe that He created primal 

 forms capable of self-development into all forms needful 

 pro tempore and pro loco, as to believe that He required a 

 fresh act of intervention to supply the lacunas which He 

 himself had made. I question whether the former be not 

 the loftier thought. 



Be it as it may, I shall prize your book, both for itself, 

 and as a proof that you are aware of the existence of such a 

 person as 



Your faithful servant, 



C. Kingsley. 



My father's old friend, the Eev. J. Brodie Innes, of Mil- 

 ton Brodie, who was for many years Vicar of Down, in some 

 reminiscences of my father which he was so good as to give 

 me, writes in the same spirit : 



" We never attacked each other. Before I knew Mr. 

 Darwin I had adopted, and publicly expressed, the principle 

 that the study of natural history, geology, and science in 

 general, should be pursued without reference to the Bible. 

 That the Book of Nature and Scripture came from the same 

 Divine source, ran in paralled lines, and when properly 

 understood would never cross. . . . 



" In [a] letter, after I had left Down, he [Darwin] 

 writes, ' We often differed, but you are one of those rare 

 mortals from whom one can differ and yet feel no shade of 

 animosity, and that is a thing [of] which I should feel very 

 proud if any one could say [it] of me.' 



" On my last visit to Down, Mr. Darwin said, at his 

 dinner-table, ' Innes and I have been fast friends for thirty 

 years, and we never thoroughly agreed on any subject but 

 once, and then we stared hard at each other, and thought 

 one of us must be very ill.' " 



The following extract from a letter to Lyell, Feb. 23, 

 1860, has a certain bearing on the points just touched 

 on : 



" With respect to Bronn's * objection that it cannot be 

 shown how life arises, and likewise to a certain extent Asa 

 Gray's remark that natural selection is not a vera causa, 

 I was much interested by finding accidentally in Brewster's 

 Life of Neivton, that Leibnitz objected to the law of gravity 



* The translator of the first German edition of the Origin. 



