A DEFENSE OF MODERN THOUGHT. 787 



think of this ? I can not and do not believe, nor would I wish to sug- 

 gest, that the Right Reverend the Bishop of Ontario was carried so 

 far in his zeal against evolution as deliberately to misrepresent Sir 

 Charles Ly ell's attitude toward that doctrine. The only other hy- 

 pothesis, however, is that of extreme ignorance. Of this his lordship 

 must stand, not only accused, but convicted. The fact of Sir Charles 

 Lyell's conversion to the views of Darwin on the origin of species was 

 one of which the whole reading world took note at the time, and which 

 has been known to every tyro in general science from that day to this. 

 His lordship, quoting from the " Principles of Geology," but without 

 any mention of edition, represents Sir Charles as holding " that spe- 

 cies have a real existence in nature, and that each was endowed at the 

 time of its creation with the attributes and organization by which it 

 is now distinguished." That these icere Sir Charles Ly ell's views when 

 the earlier editions of his " Principles " were published every one is 

 aware ; but it is a most extraordinary thing that any one should have 

 quoted them as his full twenty years after he had distinctly abandoned 

 them. The preface to the fourth edition of the " Antiquity of Man " 

 opens as follows : "The first edition of the 'Antiquity of Man' was 

 published in 1863, and was the first work in which I expressed my 

 opinion of the prehistoric age of man, and also my belief in Mr. Dar- 

 win's theory of the * Origin of Species ' as the best explanation yet 

 offered of the connection between man and those animals which have 

 flourished successively on the earth." In the tenth edition of his 

 " Principles," published in 1868, he says (page 492) that " Mr. Darwin, 

 without absolutely proving this (theory), has made it appear in the 

 highest degree probable, by an appeal to many distinct and inde- 

 pendent classes of phenomena in natural history and geology." Dar- 

 win himself would not have claimed more for his theory than this. 

 Professor Huxley would not claim more for it to-day. Enough for 

 either of them the admission that, by arguments drawn from many 

 quarters, it had been rendered " in the highest degree probable." In 

 his "Antiquity of Man,"* Sir Charles Lyell expressly acknowledges 

 the inconclusiveness of the arguments he had used at an earlier date 

 to prove that " species were primordial creations and not derivative." 

 His reasonings, he frankly confesses, could not hold their ground " in 

 the light of the facts and arguments adduced by Darwin and Hooker." 

 As regards the " descent of man," after quoting a passage from Dar- 

 win to the effect that " man is the co-descendant with other mammals 

 of a common progenitor," he observes that "we certainly can not 

 escape from such a conclusion without abandoning many of the 

 weightiest arguments which have been urged in support of variation 

 and natural selection considered as the subordinate causes by which 

 new types have been gradually introduced into the world." On every 

 point, therefore, the real views of Sir Charles Lyell, as formed in the 



* See fourth edition, p. 469. 



