iv MODERN EVOLUTION ig$ 



of 1851-58. Within the ranks of the biologists of 

 that time I met with nobody, except Dr. Grant, of 

 University College, who had a word to say for 

 Evolution, ard his advocacy was not calculated to 

 advance the cause. Outside these ranks the only 

 person known to me whose knowledge and capacity 

 compelled respect, and who was at the same time a 

 thoroughgoing evolutionist, was Mr. Herbert Spencer, 

 whose acquaintance I made, I think, in 1852, and 

 then entered into the bonds of a friendship which 

 I am happy to think has known no interruption. 

 Many and prolonged were the battles we fought on 

 this topic. But even my friend's rare dialectic skill 

 and copiousness of apt illustration could not drive 

 me from my agnostic position. I took my stand 

 upon two grounds : firstly, that up to that time the 

 evidence in favour of transmutation was wholly 

 insufficient ; and secondly, that no suggestion 

 respecting the causes of the transmutation assumed 

 which had been made was in any way adequate to 

 explain the phenomena. Looking back at the state 

 of knowledge at that time, I really do not see that 

 any other conclusion was justifiable. 



' 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 ap- 

 parently fruitless discussion to labour in the fertile 

 fields of ascertain able fact. And I may therefore 

 further suppose that the publication of the Darwin 

 and Wallace papers in 1858, and still more that of 



