February 1, 1888.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



85 



so large a question as the origin and causes of modification 

 of life-forms, to keep on turning it ovei' and over again in 

 the mind for twenty long years, to spend the working-time 

 in every day in collection and verification of facts for and 

 against it, and then to have another man launching a " bolt 

 from the blue " in the shape of a paper with exactly the 

 same theory, might well disturb even a philosopher of 

 Darwin's serenity. 



However, both Hooker and Lyell had read his sketch a 

 dozen years before, and it was arranged by these two friends, 

 not as considering claims of priority, which have too often 

 been occasion for unseemly wi-angling, but in " the interests 

 of science generally," that an abstract of Darwin's MS., 

 together with his letter to Asa Gray, should be read with 

 Wallace's paper at a meeting of the Linnean Society, July 1, 

 1858. Sir Joseph Hooker says, in a letter to Mr. Francis 

 Darwin : " The interest excited was intense, but the subject 

 was too novel and too ominous for the old school to enter 

 the lists before armouring. After the meeting it was talked 

 over with bated breath. Lyell's approval, and perhaps in a 

 small way mine, as his lieutenant in the affair, rather 

 overawed the Fellows, who would otherwise have flown out 

 against the doctrine. We had, too, the vantage-ground of 

 being familiar with the authors and their theme." 



Nothing can deprive Mr. Wallace of the honour due to 

 him as the co-originator of the most important theory of our 

 time, and in connection with this it is due to him to quote 

 his self-effacing remarks in the preface to his volume of 

 essays, as also Darwin's just tribute to him on its pub- 

 lication : — 



The present work will, I venture to think, prove that I both saw 

 at the time the value and scope of the law which I liad discovered, 

 and have since been able to apply it to some purpose in a few 

 original lines of investigation. But here my claims cease. 1 have 

 felt all my life, and I still feel, the most sincere satisfaction that 

 Mr. Darwin had been at work long before me, and that it was not 

 left for me to attempt to write the " Origin of Species." I have 

 long since measured my own strength, and know well tliat it would 

 be quite unequal to that task. Far abler men than myself may 

 confess that they have not that untiring patience in accumulating 

 and that wonderful skill in using large masses of facts of the most 

 varied kind — that wide and accurate physiological knowledge — 

 that acuteness in devising and skill in carrying out experiments, 

 and that admirable style of composition at once cl^ar, persuasive, 

 and judicial — qualities which, in their harmonious combination, 

 mark out Mr. Darwin as the man, perhaps of all men now living, 

 best fitted for the great work he has undertaken and accomplished.* 



Darwin's words are as follows : — 



There has never been passed on me, or, indeed, on any one, a 

 higher eulogium than yours. I wish that I fully deserved it. Your 

 modesty and candour are very far from new to me. I hope it is a 

 satisfaction to you to reflect — and very few things in my life have 

 been more satisfactory to me — that we have never felt any jealousy 

 towards each other, though in one sense rivals. I believe I can say 

 this of myself with truth, and I am absolutely sure it is true of you. 



Mr. Wallace modestly, but correctly, assesses his powers, 

 and his subsequent entanglement in the meshes of spiritual- 

 ism, combined with his hesitation to apply the theory of 

 evolution to man in his tout ensemble, 'f make us thankful 

 that the working-out of the details of the theory of natural 

 selection was left to Darwin alone. 



Shortly after the Linnean meeting Darwin set to work to 

 prepare a series of papers which, always regarded by him 

 as an " Abstract," ultimately took book form, and was 

 published under the title of the " Origin of Species " in 



* " Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection." Mac- 

 millan & Co. 1870. 



t In a letter to Wallace, April 14, 1869 (vol. iii., p, 116), Darwin 

 says : — " As you expected, I differ grievously from you, and I 

 am very sorry for it. I can see no necessity for calling in an addi- 

 tional and proximate cause in regard to man. But the subject is 

 too long for a letter." 



November 1859. In his own crisp, clear English, Professor 

 Huxley describes the reception of that book, adding some 

 interesting autobiographical matter, and we commend the 

 reading of his chapter to a generation which, drinking in 

 Darwinism from its birth, may learn with surprise what a 

 storm and outcry both in clerical and scientific quarters its 

 publication raised. " In fact," the Professor says, " the 

 contrast between the present condition of public opinion 

 upon the Darwinian question ; between the estimation in 

 which Darwin's views are now held in the scientific world ; 

 between the acquiescence, or at least quiescence, of the 

 theologians of the self-respecting order at the present day 

 and the outburst of antagonism on all sides in 1858-59, 

 when the new theory respecting the origin of species first 

 became known to the older generation to which 1 belong, is 

 so startling that, except for documentary evidence, I should 

 be sometimes inclined to think my memories dreams." * 



As for as the larger number of naturalists and of the 

 intelligent public who followed their lead were concerned, 

 there was an absolutely open mind to receive a sufficing 

 explanation of the mutation of species. There had been a 

 long time of preparation and speculation. Evolution in one 

 form or another is as old as Pythagoras and Empedocles, 

 but although Herbert Spencer had removed it from the 

 empirical stage at which it had remained for more than two 

 thousand years, and placed it on an inductive base broad as 

 the facts by which it was supported, and although Emerson, 

 seer-like, felt it to lie at the heart of things, it was not in 

 touch with the age until Darwinism gave it that practical 

 form and human interest by which it could be seized on and 

 applied in a concrete way. Dissertations on the passage of 

 the homogeneous to the heterogeneous; explanations of the 

 theory of the evolution of complex sidereal systems out of 

 diffused vapours of seemingly simple texture, interested 

 people only in a vague and wondering fashion, but when 

 Darwin ilhistrated development by familiar illu.strations 

 gathered from his observations and experiments, and from 

 intercourse with breeders of pigeons, horses, and dogs, and 

 applied these to the question of the variation of life-forms, 

 this went to men's " business and bosoms," and if the vulgar 

 interpreted Darwinism as the explanation of man's descent 

 from a monkey, or of the whale which was once a bear that 

 had taken to swimming, the thoughtful accepted it as the 

 master-key that unlocked the long-hidden mystery, not of 

 origins, nor of the causes of variations, nor of heredity, but 

 of the great agent, natural selection, which, operating on 

 favourable variations, has brought about myriads of species 

 from simple forms. 



Among the men of " light and leading," Hooker, Huxley, 

 Bates, and Sir John Lubbock were immediate converts, 

 so were Lyell and Asa Gray, but with reservations ; Henslow 

 and Pictet went one mile, but refused to go twain ; Agassiz, 

 Murray, and Harvey would have none of the new doctrine ; 

 neither would Adam Sedgwick, who wrote a long letter of 

 protest to Darwin, couched in loving terms, and ending 

 with the hope that " we shall meet in heaven," while the 

 unsatisfactory and " hedging " attitude of Profes.sor (now 

 Sir Richard) Owen is matter of history, as are the two 

 pitched battles at the Oxford meeting of the British Associa- 

 tion in 1860, immortalised by Huxley's annihilating rejoinder 

 to Bishop Wilberforce's question as to the Professor's lineal 

 relationship to an ape. But "the Lord was not in the 

 earthquake," and the rumblings soon ceased, to be awakened 

 for a little while when the " Descent of Man " was pub- 

 lished. The first shock over, the timid were reassured, and, 

 when the theologians, finding, like the Empress Helena in 

 search of the true cross, what they looked for, .saw .nnticipa- 



* Vol. ii. p. 181. 



