108 CHARLES DARWIN. 



again a few days later, rather complaining that his 

 work was treated, as a modification of Lamarck's : 



" This way of putting the case . . . closely connects Wallace's 

 and my views with what I consider, after two deliberate 

 readings, as a wretched book, and one from which (I well 

 remember my surprise) I gained nothing." 



When the second edition of " The Antiquity of 

 Man " appeared in a few months, there was a signifi- 

 cant change in one sentence : 



" Yet we ought by no means to undervalue the importance 

 of the step which will have been made, should it hereafter 

 become the generally received opinion of men of science (as I 

 fully expect it will) that the past changes of the organic world 

 have been brought about by the subordinate agency of such 

 causes as Variation and Natural Selection." 



The words in parentheses had been added, and 

 constituted I/yell's first public expression of an 

 opinion in favour of Darwin's views. 



About this time an article appeared in the 

 Athenaeum (March 28th, 1863), attacking the opinions 

 in favour of evolution contained in Dr. Carpenter's 

 work on Forarninifera, and supporting spontaneous 

 generation. This was one of the rare occasions on 

 which Darwin entered into controversy, and he wrote 

 attacking spontaneous generation, and pointing out 

 the numerous classes of facts which are connected 

 by an intelligible thread of reasoning by means of 

 his theory. In this letter he quoted the altered 

 sentence from the second edition of the " Antiquity." 

 Darwin's letter was answered in an article (May 2nd) 

 in which it was argued that any theory of descent 



