THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 171 



doubted whether Lamarck has not suffered more from his 

 friends than from his foes. 



Two years ago, in fact, though we venture to question if 

 even the strongest supporters of the special creation 

 hypothesis had not, now and then, an uneasy consciousness 

 that all was not right, their position seemed more impreg- 

 nable than ever, if not by its own inherent strength, at any 

 rate by the obvious failure of all the attempts which had 

 been made to carry it. On the other hand, however much 

 the few, who thought deeply on the 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 ex- 

 periment or by observation, as to be at least equally 

 distasteful. 



The choice lay between two absurdities and a middle 

 condition of uneasy scepticism ; which last, however un- 

 pleasant and unsatisfactory, was obviously the only justifi- 

 able 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 185&, 

 to hear two papers by authors living on opposite sides of the 

 globe, working out their results independently, and yet pro- 

 fessing 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 communica- 

 tion to the Linnaean Society. On perusing the essay, 

 Mr. Darwin was not a little surprised to find that it em- 

 bodied 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, 

 had been perused by his private friends fifteen or sixteen 

 years before. Perplexed in what manner to do full justice 

 both to his friend and to himself, Mr. Darwin placed 

 the matter in the hands of Dr. Hooker and Sir Charles- 

 Lyell, by whose advice he communicated a brief abstract 

 of his own views to the Linnsean Society, at the same 

 time that Mr. Wallace's paper was read. Of that abstract, 

 the work on the Origin of Species is an enlargement ; but 

 a complete statement of Mr. Darwin's doctrine is looked 



