XIL] THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 253 



against the Lamarckian views, and, as the untenability of some 

 of his conclusions was easily shown, his doctrines sank under the 

 opprobrium of scientific, as well as of theological, heterodoxy. 

 Nor have the efforts made of late years to revive them tended 

 to re-establish their credit in the minds of sound thinkers 

 acquainted with the facts of the case; indeed it may be 

 doubted whether Lamarck has not suffered more from his 

 friends than from his foes. 



Two years ago, in fact, though we venture to question if even 

 the strongest supporters of the special creation hypothesis had 

 not, now and then, an uneasy consciousness that all was not 

 right, their position seemed more impregnable than ever, if not 

 by its own inherent strength, at any rate by the obvious failure 

 of all the attempts which had been made to carry it. On the 

 other hand, however much the few, who thought deeply on the 

 question of species, might be repelled by the generally received 

 dogmas, they saw no way of escaping from them, save by the 

 adoption of suppositions, so little justified by experiment or by 

 observation, as to be at least equally distasteful. 



The choice lay between two absurdities and a middle condition 

 of uneasy scepticism ; which last, however unpleasant and un 

 satisfactory, was obviously the only justifiable state of mind under 

 the circumstances. 



Such being the general ferment in the minds of naturalists, it 

 is no wonder that they mustered strong in the rooms of the 

 Linnsean Society, on the 1st of July of the year 1858, to hear 

 two papers by authors living on opposite sides of the globe, 

 working out their results independently, and yet professing to 

 have discovered one and the same solution of all the problems 

 connected with species. The one of these authors was an able 

 naturalist, Mr. Wallace, who had been employed for some years 

 in studying the productions of the islands of the Indian Archi 

 pelago, and who had forwarded a memoir embodying his views to 

 Mr. Darwin, for communication to the Linnaean Society. On 

 perusing the essay, Mr. Darwin was not a little surprised to find 

 that it embodied some of the leading ideas of a great work which 



