32 MAN [CHAP. VIII 



Letter 405 Lyell's chapters on Man. 1 I quite agree about his high- 

 mindedness, and have long thought so ; but in this case it is 

 too far, and I shall tell him so. I am not sure that I fully 

 agree with his views about Man, but there is no doubt, in my 

 opinion, on the remarkable genius shown by the paper. I 

 agree, however, to the main new leading idea. 



Letter 406 To A. R. Wallace. 2 



Down, [May] 28th [1864]. 



I am so much better that I have just finished a paper for 

 the Linnean Society 3 ; but I am not yet at all strong, I felt 

 much disinclination to \vrite, and therefore you must forgive 

 me for not having sooner thanked you for your paper on 

 Man 4 received on the I ith. 5 But first let me say that I have 

 hardly ever in my life been more struck by any paper than 

 that on " Variation," etc., etc., in the Reader? I feel sure that 

 such papers will do more for the spreading of our views 

 on the modification of species than any separate treatises 

 on the simple subject itself. It is really admirable ; but 

 you ought not in the Man paper to speak of the theory as 

 mine ; it is just as much yours as mine. One correspondent 



1 See Life and Letters, III., p. 11 et seq. for Darwin's disappointment 

 over Lyell's treatment of the evolutionary question in his Antiquity of 

 Man ; see also p. 29 for Lyell's almost pathetic words about his own 

 position between the discarded faith of many years and the new one not 

 yet assimilated. See also Letters 132, 164, 170. 



3 This letter was published in Life and Letters, III., p. 89. 



3 On the three forms, etc., of Lythrum. 



4 Anthropological Review, May 1864. 



5 Mr. Wallace wrote, May loth, 1864 : " I send you now my little 

 contribution to the theory of the origin of man. I hope you will be able 

 to agree with me. If you are able [to write] I shall be glad to have 

 your criticisms. I was led to the subject by the necessity of explaining 

 the vast mental and cranial differences between man and the apes 

 combined with such small structural differences in other parts of the 

 body, and also by an endeavour to account for the diversity of human 

 races combined with man's almost perfect stability of form during all 

 historical epochs." 



6 Reader, April i6th, 1864, an abstract of Mr. Wallace: "On the 

 Phenomena of Variation and Geographical Distribution as illustrated by 

 the Papilionidas of the Malayan Region." Linn. Soc. Trans., XXV. 



