T11E CENTURY'S PROGRESS IN BIOLOGY 



the leader immediately after the publication of the Ori- 

 gin. Darwin had all along felt the utmost confidence 

 in the ultimate triumph of his ideas. "Our posterity," 

 he declared in a letter to Hooker, " will marvel as much 

 about the current belief [in special creation] as we do 

 about fossil shells having been thought to be created as 

 we now see them." But he fully realized that for the 

 present success of his theory of transmutation the cham- 

 pionship of a few leaders of science was all-essential. 

 He felt that if he could make converts of Hooker and 

 Lyell and of Thomas Henry Huxley at once, .all would 

 be well. 



His success in this regard, as in others, exceeded his 

 expectations. Hooker was an ardent disciple from read- 

 ing the proof-sheets before the book was published ; 

 Lyell renounced his former beliefs and fell into line a 

 few months later ; while Huxley, so soon as he had mas- 

 tered the central idea of natural selection, marvelled 

 that so simple yet all-potent a thought had escaped him 

 so long, and then rushed eagerly into the fray, wielding 

 the keenest dialectic blade that was drawn during the 

 entire controversy. Then, too, unexpected recruits were 

 found in Sir John Lubbock and John Tyndall, who car- 

 ried the war eagerly into their respective territories; 

 while Herbert Spencer, who had advocated a doctrine 

 of transmutation on philosophic grounds some years be- 

 fore Darwin published the key to the mystery and who 

 himself had barely escaped independent discovery of 

 that key lent his masterful influence to the cause. In 

 America, the famous botanist Asa Gray, who had long 

 been a correspondent of Darwin's, but whose advocacy 

 of the new theory had not been anticipated, became an 

 ardent propagandist; while in Germany Ernst Heinrich 



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