Ch. XIV.l 1861—1871. 257 



gression, and closely connects "Wallace's and my views with 

 what I consider, after two deliberate readings, as a wretched 

 book, and one from which (I well remember my surprise) I 

 gained nothing. But I know you rank it higher, which is 

 curious, as it did not in the least shako your belief. But 

 enough, and more than enough. Please remember you have 

 brought it all down on yourself! I 



I am very sorry to hear about Falconer's " reclamation." * I 

 hate the very word, and have a sincere affection for him. 



Did you ever read anything so wretched as the Athenseum 

 reviews of you, and of Huxley f especially. Your object to 

 make man old, and Huxley's object to degrade him. The 

 wretched writor has not a glimpse of what the discovery of 

 scientific truth means. How splendid some pages are in 

 Huxley, but I fear the book will not be popular. . . . 



In the Athenseum, Mar. 28, 1862, p. 417, appeared a notice of 

 Dr. Carpenter's book on * Foraminifera,' which led to more 

 skirmishing in the same journal. The article was remarkable 

 for upholding spontaneous generation. 



My father wrote, Mar. 29, 1863 :— 



u Many thanks for Athenseum, received this morning, and to 

 be returned to-morrow morning. Who would have ever thought 

 of the old stupid Athenseum taking to Oken-like transcendental 

 philosophy written in Owenian style 1 



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

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

 truckled to public opinion, and used the Pentateuchal term of 

 creation, J by which I really meant * appeared ' by some wholly 

 unknown process. It is mere rubbish, thinking at present of 

 the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of 

 matter." 



The Athenseum continued to be a scientific battle-ground. On 

 April 4, 1863, Falconer wrote a severe article on Lyell. And 



* " Falconer, whom I [Lyell] referred to oftener than to any other author, 

 says I have not done justice to the part he took in resuscitating the cave 

 question, and says he shall come out with a separate paper to prove it. 

 1 offered to alter anything in the new edition, but this he declined." — 

 C. Lyell to C. Darwin, March 11, 1863 ; Lyell's Life, vol ii. p. 364. 



t Man's Place in Nature, 1863. 



% This refers to a passage in which the reviewer of Dr. Carpenter's 

 book speaks of " an operation of force," or " a concurrence of forces which 

 have now no place in nature," as being, " a creative force, in fact, which 

 Darwin could only express in Pentateuchal terms as the primordial form 

 1 into which life was first breathed.' " The conception of expressing a 

 creative force as a primordial form is the reviewer's. 



8 



