290 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XV 



which Huxley replies that Owen he lies," shall be un- 

 mistakable. 1 



I will take care about the Cheiroptera, and I will 

 look at Lamarck again. But I doubt if I shall improve 

 my estimate of the latter. The notion of common 

 descent was not his still less that of modification by 

 variation and he was as far as De Maillet from seeing 

 his way to any vera causa by which varieties might be 

 intensified into species. 



If Darwin is right about natural selection the dis- 

 covery of this vera causa sets him to my niind in a 

 different region altogether from all his predecessors and 

 I should no more call his doctrine a modification of 

 Lamarck's than I should call the Newtonian theory of 

 the celestial motions a modification of the Ptolemaic 

 system. Ptolemy imagined a mode of explaining those 

 motions. Newton proved their necessity from the laws 

 and a force demonstrably in operation. If he is only 

 right Darwin will, I think, take his place with such men 

 as Harvey, and even if he is wrong his sobriety and 

 accuracy of thought will put him on a far different level 

 from Lamarck. I want to make this clear to people. 



I am disposed to agree with you about the 

 " emasculate " and " uncircumcised " partly for your 

 reasons, partly because I believe it is an excellent rule 

 always to erase anything that strikes one as particularly 

 smart when writing it But it is a great piece of self- 

 denial to abstain from expressing my peculiar antipathy 

 to the people indicated, and I hope I shall be rewarded 

 for the virtue. 



As to the secondary causes I only wished to guard 

 myself from being understood to imply that I had any 

 comprehension of the meaning of the term. If my 

 phrase looks naughty I will alter it "What I want is to 

 be read, and therefore to give no unnecessary handle to 

 the enemy. There will be row enough whatever I do. 



1 See p. 278. 



