CH. xi] THE COMING OF EVOLUTION 137 



course of business. Mr Lucas, though an excellent journalist,... 

 was as innocent of any knowledge of science as a babe, and 

 bewailed himself to an acquaintance on having to deal with such 

 a book. Whereupon, he was recommended to ask me to get him 

 out of the difficulty, and he applied to me accordingly, explaining, 

 however, that it would be necessary for him formally to adopt 

 anything I might be disposed to write, by prefacing it with two 

 or three paragraphs of his own.' 



*I was too anxious to seize upon the opportunity thus 

 offered of giving the book a fair chance with the multitudinous 

 readers of the Times, to make any difficulty about conditions ; 

 and being then very full of the subject, I wrote the article faster, 

 I think, than I ever wrote anything in my life, and sent it to 

 Mr Lucas who duly prefixed his opening sentences 137 .' 



Many journalists, however, were less conscientious 

 than Mr Lucas, and most of the other early notices of 

 the book were pretty equally divided between undis- 

 criminating praise of it as a novelty and foolish 

 reprobations of its 'wickedness.' 



It was fortunate that Darwin followed the strong 

 advice given to him by Lyell, and did not attempt to 

 reply to the adverse criticisms ; for the only effect of 

 these was to arouse curiosity and thus to increase the 

 circulation of the book. 



Although Darwin had wisely avoided the danger 

 of exciting prejudice against his work by definitely 

 applying the theory of Natural Selection to the case 

 of man simply remarking, in order to avoid the 

 charge of concealing his views, that 'light would be 



