132 THE COMING [CH. 



that he had command of such an enormous body 

 of methodically arranged notes. He showed the 

 greatest anxiety to convince his scientific contem- 

 poraries, and at the same time to make his meaning 

 clear to the general reader. With the former object, 

 both MS. and printed proofs were submitted to the 

 criticism of Lyell and Hooker ; and the latter end 

 was obtained by sending the MS. to a lady friend, 

 Miss G. Toilet she, as Darwin says ' being an 

 excellent judge of style, is going to look out errors 

 for me.' Finally the proofs of the book were 

 carefully read by Mrs Darwin herself. 



The splendid success achieved by the work is 

 a matter of history. Its clearness of statement and 

 candour in reasoning pleased the general public ; 

 critics without any profound knowledge of natural 

 history were beguiled into the opinion that they 

 understood the whole matter ! and, according to 

 their varying tastes, indulged in shallow objection 

 or slightly offensive patronage. The fully-anticipated, 

 theological vituperation was of course not lacking, 

 but most of the l replies' to Darwin's arguments 

 were 'lifted' from the book itself, in which objections 

 to his views were honestly stated and candidly con- 

 sidered by the author. 



The best testimony to the profound and far- 

 reaching character of the scientific discussions of 

 the Origin of Species is found in the fact that both 



