246 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XIII 



to pin our faith to that or any other speculation, but to 

 get hold of clear and definite conceptions which could be 

 brought face to face with facts and have their validity 

 tested. The "Origin" provided us with the working 

 hypothesis we sought. Moreover, it did the immense 

 service of freeing us for ever from the dilemma Refuse 

 to accept the creation hypothesis, and what have you to 

 propose that can be accepted by any cautious reasoner 1 

 In 1857 I had no answer ready, and I do not think that 

 any one else had. A year later we reproached ourselves 

 with dulness for being perplexed with such an inquiry. 

 My reflection, when I first made myself master of the 

 central idea of the " Origin " was, " How extremely 

 stupid not to have thought of that ! " I suppose that 

 Columbus' companions said much the same when he 

 made the egg stand on end. The facts of variability, of 

 the struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions, 

 were notorious enough ; but none of us had suspected 

 that the road to the heart of the species problem lay 

 through them, until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the 

 darkness, and the beacon-fire of the " Origin " guided the 

 benighted. 



Whether the particular shape which the doctrine of 

 Evolution, as applied to the organic world, took in 

 Darwin's hands, would prove to be final or not, was to 

 me a matter of indifference. In my earliest criticisms of 

 the " Origin " I ventured to point out that its logical 

 foundation was insecure so long as experiments in 

 selective breeding had not produced varieties which 

 were more or less infertile ; and that insecurity remains 

 up to the present time. But, with any and every 

 critical doubt which my sceptical ingenuity could suggest, 

 the Darwinian hypothesis remained incomparably more 

 probable than the creation hypothesis. And if we had 

 none of us been able to discern the paramount significance 

 of some of the most patent and notorious of natural facts, 

 until they were, so to speak, thrust under our noses, 



