THE DARWINIAN REVOLUTION BEGINS 121 



the first fasciculus of Colenso's famous work on the 

 Pentateuch had dealt a serious blow from the ecclesias- 

 tical and critical side at the authenticity and historical 

 truth of the Mosaic cosmogony. Lyell now from the 

 scientific side completely demolished its literal truth, as 

 ordinarily interpreted, by throwing back the primitive 

 origin of our race into a dim past of immeasurable anti- 

 quity. In so doing he was clearing the way for Charles 

 Darwin's second great work, ' The Descent of Man ; ' 

 and by incorporating in his book Huxley's remarks on 

 the Neanderthal skull, and much similar evolutionary 

 matter, he advertised the new creed in the animal 

 origin of our race with all the acquired weight of his 

 immense and justly-deserved European reputation. As 

 a matter of taste, Lyell did not relish the application of 

 evolutionism to his own species. But, with that perfect 

 loyalty to fact which he shared so completely with 

 Charles Darwin, as soon as he found the evidence over- 

 whelming, he gave in. By that grudging concession 

 he immensely strengthened the position of the new 

 creed. ' I plead guilty,' he writes to Sir Joseph 

 Hooker, 'to going farther in my reasoning towards 

 transmutation than in my sentiments and imagination, 

 and perhaps for that very reason I shall lead more 

 people on to Darwin and you, than one who, being born 

 later, like Lubbock, has comparatively little to abandon 

 of old and long-cherished ideas, which constituted the 

 charm to me of the theoretical part of the science in my 

 earlier days.' And to Darwin himself he writes re- 

 gretfully. * The descent of man from the brutes takes 

 away much of the charm from my speculations on the 

 past relating to such matters.' This very reluctance 



