DARWINISM. 5 



birth, was held as far hack as 1794-5, hy four men of 

 distinguished genius, hy Lamarck, by Mr. Darwin's 

 own grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, by Geoffrey 

 Saint Hilaire, and by the poet Goethe. In the present 

 day, Mr. Wallace, Mr. Herbert Spencer, the great 

 zoologist Van Baer, and others, independently of Mr. 

 Darwin, seem to have come more or less to the same 

 conclusions, which have been warmly espoused and 

 powerfully vindicated by Dr. Hooker, Professor Huxley, 

 and Sir Charles Lyell. I mention these names because 

 it seems to be their due, and not for the sake of giving 

 weight to any argument because of the scientific renown 

 of its advocates ; there are names, it may be, equally 

 distinguished on the opposite side. But one thing ought 

 to be observed, that the progress of scientific enquiry 

 has achieved so much during the last hundred years 

 that the opinions of the older Naturalists have an im- 

 portance when they agree with modern conclusions, 

 which they cannot have when they differ from them, 

 unless it can be shown that the observations, the experi- 

 ments, the discoveries of late years had all been made 

 by, or were known to, the earlier enquirers. For those, 

 however, who think the opinions of a past generation 

 of necessity more trustworthy than those of the present, 

 Sir Charles Lyeli has done well to point out that 

 LinnaBus himself looked forward to a time when it 

 should be proved that in botany, at least, all species of 

 a genus had descended from the same mother l . 



This is precisely Mr. Darwin's opinion on the origin 

 1 Lyell, Principles of Geology,' vol. ii. p. 324. Tenth Edition. 



