A Physicist on Evolution. 189 



which, to use the words of Mr. Darwin, " he distinctly recognizes 

 the principle of natural selection ; and this is the first recognition 

 that has heen indicated." The thoroughness and skill with which 

 Wells pursued his work, and the obvious independence of his 

 character, rendered him long ago a favourite with me ; and it gave 

 me the liveliest pleasure to alight upon this additional testimony to 

 his penetration. Prof. Grant, ]\Ir. Patrick Matthew, Von Buch, 

 the author of the ' Vestiges,' D'Halloy, and others,* by the enun- 

 ciation 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 subject 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 Leibnitz was upon his track. Darwin for two-and- 

 twenty years pondered the problem of the origin of species, and 

 doubtless he would have continued to do so had he not found 

 Wallace upon his track.f A concentrated but full and powerful 

 epitome of his labours 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 were 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 prejudice, 

 willing to accept any conclusion that science had to offer, provided 

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

 Mr. 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 witli 

 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 



* In 1855 Ml-. Herbert Spencer ('Principles of Psychology,' 2nd edit., vol. i., 

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

 broken evolution, and through the instrumentality of what are called natural 

 causes. 



t The behaviour of Mr. Wallace in relation to this subject has been dignified 

 ill the highest degree. 



