LYELL. 227 



they formed the great working majority in numbers 

 and influence. By considering only the evolution- 

 ists, we have wholly lost the perspective of opinion 

 in the mid-century. This perspective must be re- 

 gained in order to appreciate the revolution of 

 thought brought about by Darwin. 



Lyell, who believed in Natural Causation as part 

 of his doctrine of Uniformity, had been teaching 

 that, " as often as certain forms of animals and plants 

 disappeared, for reasons quite unintelligible to us, 

 others took their place by virtue of a causation, 

 which was quite beyond our comprehension." He 

 had carefully studied, and rejected, the Lamarckian 

 explanation. The very apologetic tone in which 

 Darwin himself confessed to Hooker, Lyell, and 

 Gray, in turn, his nascent belief in the mutability of 

 species, proves that he did not consider this belief as 

 an enviable or altogether desirable possession. " I 

 formerly spoke," he wrote, " to very many naturalists 

 on the subject of Evolution, and never once met with 

 any sympathetic agreement. It is probable that 

 some did then believe in Evolution, but they were 

 either silent, or expressed themselves so ambigu- 

 ously, that it was not easy to understand their mean- 

 ing." Later, after the completion of the Origin, he 

 wrote : " If I can only convince Hooker, Lyell, and 

 Huxley that species are mutable " ; again, in reply to 

 Huxley's somewhat guarded acceptance of the 

 theory : " like a good Catholic who has received ex- 

 treme unction, I can now sing ' nunc dimittis. 



