70 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



II 



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 dis- 

 tasteful. 



The choice lay between two absurdities and a 

 middle condition of uneasy scepticism ; which 

 last, however unpleasant and unsatisfactory, 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 Archipelago, 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 he had been 

 preparing for twenty years, and parts of which, 

 containing a development of the very same views, 



