THE ' ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' 



545 



" But, after all, what changes species may really undergo ! 

 How impossible will it be to distinguish and lay down a line, 

 beyond which some of the so-called extinct species have 

 never passed into recent ones." 



Again, the following remarkable passage occurs in the 

 postscript of a letter addressed to Sir John Herschel in 



1836 :- 



" In regard to the origination of new species, I am very 

 glad to find that you think it probable that it may be carried 

 on through the intervention of intermediate causes. I left 

 this rather to be inferred, not thinking it worth while to 

 offend a certain class of persons by embodying in words 

 what would only be a speculation." * He goes on to refer 

 to the criticisms which have been directed against him on 

 the ground that, by leaving species to be originated by 

 miracle, he is inconsistent with his own doctrine of uniformi- 

 tarianism ; and he leaves it to be understood that he had not 

 replied, on the ground of his general objection to controversy. 



Lyell's contemporaries were not without some inkling of 

 his esoteric doctrine. Whewell's ' History of the Inductive 

 Sciences,' whatever its philosophical value, is always worth 

 reading and always interesting, if under no other aspect than 

 that of an evidence of the speculative limits within which a 

 highly-placed divine might, at that time, safely range at will. 

 In the course of his discussion of uniformitarianism, the en- 

 cyclopaedic Master of Trinity observes : — 



"Mr. Lyell, indeed, has spoken of an hypothesis that 



* In the same sense, see the letter to Whewell, March 7, 1S37, vol. ii., 



p. 5:— 



" In regard to this last subject [the changes from one set of animal 

 and vegetable species to another] . . . you remember what Herschel said 

 in his letter to me. If I had stated as plainly as he has done the possibil- 

 ity of the introduction or origination of fresh species being a natural, in 

 contradistinction to a miraculous process, I should have raised a host of 

 prejudices against me, which are unfortunately opposed at every step to 

 any philosopher who attempts to address the public on these mysterious 

 subjects." See also letter to Sedgwick, Jan. 20, 1838, ii. p. 35. 



