PROFESSOR TYNDALL'S ADDRESS. 671 



alight upon this additional testimony to his penetration. Prof. Grant, 

 Mr. Patrick Matthew, Yon Buch, the author of the " Vestiges," 

 D'Halloy, and others,^ by the enunciation of views more or less clear 

 and correct, showed that the question had been fermenting long prior 

 to the year 1858, when Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace simultaneously, 

 but independently, placed their closely concurrent views upon the sub- 

 ject before the Linnean Society. 



These papers were followed in 1859 by the publication of the first 

 edition of " The Origin of Species." All great things come slowly to 

 the birth. Copernicus, as I informed you, pondered his great work for 

 thirty-three years. Newton for nearly twenty years kept the idea of 

 Gravitation before his mind ; for twenty years also he dwelt upon his 

 discovery of Fluxions, and doubtless would have continued to make it 

 the object of his private thought had he not found that Liebnitz was 

 upon his track. Darwin for two-and-twenty years pondered the prob- 

 lem of the origin of species, and doubtless he would have continued to 

 do so had he not found Wallace upon his track.^ A concentrated but 

 full and powerful epitome of his labors was the consequence. The 

 book was by no means an easy one ; and probably not one in every 

 score of those who then attacked it had read its pages through, or 

 was competent to grasp their significance if they had. I do not say 

 this merely to discredit them, for there were in those days some really 

 eminent scientific men, entirely raised above the heat of popular preju- 

 dice, willing to accept any conclusion that science had to ofier, pro- 

 vided it was duly backed by fact and argument, and who entirely 

 mistook ]Mi*. Darwin's views. In fact, the work needed an expounder, 

 and it found one in Mr. Huxley. I know nothing more admirable in 

 the way of scientific exposition than those early articles of his on the 

 origin of species. He swept the curve of discussion through the really 

 significant points of the subject, enriched his exposition with profound 

 original remarks and reflections, often summing up in a single pithy 

 sentence an argument which a less compact mind would have spread 

 over pages. But there is one impression made by the book itself 

 which no exposition of it, however luminous, can convey, and that is 

 the impression of the vast amount of labor, both of observation and of 

 thought, implied in its production. Let us glance at its principles. 



It is conceded on all hands that what are called varieties are con- 

 tinually produced. The rule is probably without exception. No chick 

 and no child is in all respects and particulars the counterpart of its 

 brother or sister; and in such difierences we have "variety" incipient. 

 No naturalist could tell how far this variation could be carried ; but 



^ In 1855, Mr. Herbert Spencer (" Principles of Psychology," second edition, vol. i., 

 p. 465) expressed " the belief that life under all its forms has arisen by an unbroken 

 evolution, and through the instrumentality of what are called natural causes." 



* The behavior of Mr. Wallace in relation to this subject has been dignified in the 

 highest degree. 



