vii] OF EVOLUTION 77 



new discoveries, especially by yours, that we may begin to hope 

 that the great principles there insisted on will stand the test of 

 new discoveries 70 .' 



To which the younger and more ardent Darwin 

 warmly replied : 



' Begin to hope : why, the possibility of a doubt has never 

 crossed my mind for many a day. This may be very unphilo- 



sophical, but my geological salvation is staked on it it makes 



me quite indignant that you should talk of hoping 71 .' 



When talking with Lyell at this time about the 

 opposition of the old school of geologists to their 

 joint views, Darwin said, 'What a good thing it 

 would be if every scientific man was to die at sixty 

 years old, as afterwards he would be sure to oppose 

 all new doctrines 72 .' 



In conversations that I had with him late in life, 

 Darwin several times remarked to me, that 'he had 

 seen so many of his friends make fools of themselves 

 by putting forward new theoretical views in their old 

 age, that he had resolved quite early in life, never to 

 publish any speculative opinions after he was sixty/ 

 But both in conversation and in his writings he always 

 maintained that Lyell was an exception to all such 

 rules, seeing that at last he adopted the theory of 

 Natural Selection in his old age, thus displaying the 

 most ' remarkable candour/ 



All who had the pleasure of discussing geological 



