ATTACKS ON THE ' OKIGIN ' 513 



slur upon all who substitute hypotheses for strict inductions, 

 and as he expressed himself in regard to some of C. D.'s 

 suggestions as revolting to his own sense of right and wrong, 

 and as Dr. Clark, 1 who followed him, spoke so unnecessarily 

 severely against Darwin's views, I got up, as Sedgwick had 

 alluded to me, and stuck up for Darwin as well as I could, 

 refusing to allow that he was guided by any but truthful 

 motives, and declaring that he himself believed he was 

 exalting and not debasing our views of a Creator, in attri- 

 buting to him a power of imposing laws on the Organic 

 World by which to do his work, as effectually as his laws 

 imposed on the inorganic had done it in the Mineral 

 Kingdom. 



I believe I succeeded in diminishing, if not entirely 

 removing, the chances of Darwin's being prejudged by 

 many who take their cue in such cases according to the views 

 of those they suppose may know something of the matter. 

 Yesterday at my lectures I alluded to the subject, and showed 

 how frequently Naturalists were at fault in regarding as 

 species, forms which had (in some cases) been shown to be 

 varieties, . and how legitimately Darwin had deduced his 

 inferences from positive experiment. Indeed I had on 

 Monday replied to a sneer (I don't mean from Sedgwick) 

 at his pigeon results, by declaring that the case necessitated 

 an appeal to such domestic experiments, and that this was 

 the legitimate and best way of proceeding for the detection 

 of those laws which we are endeavouring to discover. 



I do not disguise my own opinion that Darwin has pressed 

 his hypothesis too far, but at the same time I assert my belief 

 that his Book is (as Owen described it to me) the ' Book of 

 the Day.' I suspect the passages I marked in the Edinburgh 

 Eeview for the illumination of Sedgwick have produced an 

 impression upon him to a certain extent. When I had had 

 my say, Sedgwick got up to explain, in a very few words, his 

 good opinion of Darwin, but that he wished it to be understood 



1 William Clark, Professor of Anatomy. In the Life of Charles Darwin, 

 ii. 308, C. D.; writing to Lyell, quotes Henslow as informing him that Sedgwick 

 and then Clark attacked his book at the Cambridge Philosophical Society. To 

 this Sir F. Darwin adds a note : ' My father seems to have misunderstood his 

 informant. I am assured by [the late] Mr. J. W. Clark that his father (Prof. 

 Clark) did not support Sedgwick in the attack.' The inference seems to be 

 that he did not support Sedg wick's denunciations of the Origin on moral as 

 apart from scientific grounds. 



