ON THE RECEPTION OF 



perfect knowledge. I was not aware, at that time, that he 

 had then been many years brooding over the species-question ; 

 and the humorous smile which accompanied his gentle answer, 

 that such was not altogether his view, long haunted and 

 puzzled me. But it would seem that four or five years' hard 

 work had enabled me to understand what it meant ; for 

 Lyell,* writing to Sir Charles Bunbury (under date of April 

 30, 1856), says : 



" When Huxley, Hooker, and Wollaston were at Darwin's 

 last week they (all four of them) ran a tilt against species 

 further, I believe, than they are prepared to go." 



I recollect nothing of this beyond the fact of meeting Mr. 

 Wollaston ; and except for Sir Charles' distinct assurance 

 as to " all four," I should have thought my outrecuidance was 

 probably a counterblast to Wollaston's conservatism. With 

 regard to Hooker, he was already, like Voltaire's Habbakuk, 

 "capable de tout " in the way of advocating Evolution. 



As I have already said, I imagine that most of those of 

 my contemporaries who thought seriously about the matter, 

 were very much in my own state of mind inclined to say to 

 both Mosaists and Evolutionists, " a plague on both your 

 houses!" and disposed to turn aside from an interminable 

 and apparently fruitless discussion, to labour in the fertile 

 fields of ascertainable fact. And I may, therefore, further 

 suppose that the publication of the Darwin and Wallace 

 papers in 1858, and still more that of the 'Origin' in 1859, 

 had the effect upon them of the flash of light, which to a man 

 who has lost himself in a dark night, suddenly reveals a road 

 which, whether it takes him straight home or not, certainly 

 goes his way. That which we were looking for, and could 

 not find, was a hypothesis respecting the origin of known 

 organic forms, which assumed the operation of no causes but 

 such as could be proved to be actually at work. We wanted, 

 not to pin our faith to that or any other speculation, but to 

 get hold of clear and definite conceptions which could be 



* ' Life and Letters,' vol. ii. p. 212. 



