202 SPREAD OF EVOLUTION. [1863. 



which in one sense I am very glad of, as I should hate a con- 

 troversy ; but in another sense I am very sorry for, as I long 

 to be in the same boat with all my friends. ... I am hearti- 

 ly glad the book is going off so well. 



Ever yours, 



C. DARWIN, 



C. Darwin to J. D. Hooker. 



Down [March 29, 1863], 



. . . Many thanks for Athenaum, received this morning, 

 and to be returned to-morrow morning. Who would have 

 ever thought of the old stupid Athenceum taking to Oken-like 

 transcendental philosophy written in Owenian style !*.... 

 It will be some time before we see u slime, protoplasm, &c.," 

 generating a new animal.f But I have long regretted that I 



* This refers to a review of Dr. Carpenter's ' Introduction to the study 

 of Foraminifera,' that appeared in the Athenczum of March 28, 1863 (p. 

 417). The reviewer attacks Dr. Carpenter's views in as much as they sup- 

 port the doctrine of Descent ; and he upholds spontaneous generation 

 (Heterogeny) in place of what Dr. Carpenter, naturally enough, believed 

 in, viz. the genetic connection of living and extinct Foraminifera. In the 

 next number is a letter by Dr. Carpenter, which chiefly consists of a pro- 

 test against the reviewer's somewhat contemptuous classification of Dr. 

 Carpenter and my father as disciple and master. In the course of the let- 

 ter Dr. Carpenter says p. 461 : 



" Under the influence of his foregone conclusion that I have accepted 

 Mr. Darwin as my master, and his hypothesis as my guide, your reviewer 

 represents me as blind to the significance of the general fact stated by me, 

 that ' there has been no advance in the foraminiferous type from the palaeo- 

 zoic period to the present time.' But for such a foregone conclusion he 

 would have recognised in this statement the expression of my conviction 

 that the present state of scientific evidence, instead of sanctioning the idea 

 that the descendants of the primitive type or types of Foraminifera can ever 

 rise to any higher grade, justifies the anti-Darwinian inference, that how- 

 ever widely they diverge from each other and from their originals, they 

 still remain Foraminifera." 



f On the same subject my father wrote in 1871 : " It is often said that 

 all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are now 

 present, which could ever have been present. But if (and oh ! what a big 



