314 



NATURE 



\Aug. 20. 1874 



fathers, and by inheritance into us must necessarily be hypo- 

 critical and insincere. Let us disavow and discountenance such 

 people, cherishing the unswerving faith that what is good and 

 true in both our arejuments will be preserved for the benefit of 

 humanity, while all that is bad or false will disappear." 



It is worth remarking that in one respect the bishop was'a 

 product of his age. Long previous to his day the nature of the 

 soul had been so favomite and general a topic of discussion, that 

 when the students of the University of Paris wished to know the 

 leanings of a new iirofessor, they at once requested him to lecture 

 unon the soul. About the time of Bishop Butler the question 

 was not only agitated but extended. It was seen by the clear- 

 witted men who entfied this arena that many of their best argu- 

 ments applied equally to brutes and men. The bishop's argu- 

 ments were of this character. He saw it, admitted it, accepted 

 the consequences, and boldly embraced the whole animal world 

 in his scheme of immortalilv- 



Bishop Butler accepted with unwavering trust the chronology 

 of the Old Testament, describing it as "confirmed by the natural 

 and civil history of the world, collected from co union historians, 

 from the state of the earth, and from the late inventions of arts 

 and sciences." These words mark progress : they must seem 

 somewhat hoary to the bishop's successors of to-day.* It is 

 hardly necessary to inform you that since his time the domain of 

 the iraturalist has been immensely extended — the whole science 

 of geology, with its astoumling revelations regarding the life of 

 the ancient earth, having been created. The rigidity of old con- 

 ceptions has been relaxed, the public mind being rendered gradu- 

 ally tolerant of the idea that not for six thousand, nor for sixty 

 thousand, nor for six thousand thousand, but for .-eons embracing 

 untold millions of years, this earth has been the theatre of life 

 and death. The riddle of the rocks has been read by the geolo- 

 gist and pala:ontologist, from sub-cambrian depths to the deposits 

 thickening over the sea-bottoms of to-day. And upon the leaves 

 of that stone book are, as you know, stamped the characters, 

 plainer and surer than those formed by the ink of history, which 

 carry the mind back into abysses of past time compared with 

 which the periods which satisfied Bishop Butler cease to have a 

 visual angle. Everybody now knows this ; all men admit it ; 

 still, when they were first broached these verities of science found 

 loud-tonged denunciators, who proclaimed not only their base- 

 lessness considered scientifically, but their immorality considered 

 as questions of ethics and religion : the Book of Genesis h.id 

 slated the question in a different fashion ; and science must 

 necessarily go to pieces when it clashed with this authority. And 

 .IS the seed 'of the thistle produces a thistle, and nothing else, so 

 these objectors scatter their germs abroad, and reproduce their 

 kind, ready to play again the part of their intellectual progenitors, 

 to show the same virulcnc?, the same ignorance, to achieve for 

 a lime the same success, and finally to suffer the same inexorable 

 defeat. Sure the time must come at Last when human nature in 

 its entirety, whose legitimate demands it is admitted science alone 

 cannot satisfy, will find interpreters and expositors of a different 

 stamp from those rash and ill-informed persons who have been 

 hitherto so ready to hurl themselves against every new scientific 

 revelation, lest it should endanger what they are pleased to con- 

 sider theirs. 



The lode of discovery once struck, those petrified forms in 

 which life was at one time active, increased to multitudes and 

 demanded classification. The general fact soon became evident 

 that none but the simplest forms of life lie lowest down, that as 

 we climb higher and higher among the superimposed strata more 

 perfect forms appear. The change, however, from form to lorm 

 was not continuous — but by steps, some sm.all, some great. " A 

 section," fays Mr. Huxley, " a hundred feet thick will exhibit at 

 different heights a dozen' species of ammonite, none of which 

 passes beyond its particular zone of limestone, or clay, into the 

 zone below it, or into that above it." In the presence of such 

 facts it was not possible to avoid the question. Have these 

 forms, showing, though in broken stages and with many irregu- 

 larities, this unmistakable general advance, been subjected to no 

 continuous law of growth or variation ? Had our education been 

 purely scientific, or had it been sufficiently detached from influ- 

 ences which, however ennobling in another domain, have always 

 proved hindrances and delusions when introduced as factors into 

 the domain of physics, the scientific mind never could h.ave 

 swerved fipni the search for a law of growth, or allowed itself to 



* Only to some ; for there are dignitaries who even now speak of the 

 eaith's locky crust as so much building material prepared for man at the 

 Cicalion. biirely it Is lime that this loose langiuige thoult cease. 



accept the anthropomorphism which regarded each successive 

 stratum as a kind of mechanic's bench for the manufacture of 

 new species out of all relation to the old. 



Biassed, however, by their previous education, the great majo- 

 rity of naturalists invoked a special creative act to account for 

 the appearance of each new group of org.inisms. Doubtless 

 ihere were numliers who \vere clear-headed enough to see that 

 this was no explanation at all, that in point of fact it was an 

 attempt, by the introduction of a greater difficultv, to account 

 for a less. Bat having nothing to offer in the way of explanation, 

 they for the most part held their peace. Still the thoughts of 

 rellecting men naturally and necessarily simmered round the 

 question. De Maillet, a contemporary of Newton, has been 

 brought into notice by Prof Huxley as one who " had a notion 

 of the modifiability of living forms." In my frequent conversa- 

 tions with him, the late Sir Benjamin Brodie, a man of highly 

 philosophic mind, often drew my attention to the fact that, as 

 early as 1794, Charles D.irwin's grandfather was the pioneer of 

 Charles Darwin. In iSoi, and in subsequent years, the cele- 

 brated Lamarck, who produced so profound an impression on 

 the public mind through the vigorous exposition of his views by 

 the author of "Vestiges of Creation," endeavoured to showi,the 

 development of species out of changes of habit and extern.il con- 

 dition. In 1S13, Dr. Veils, the founder of our present theory 

 'if deu-, read before the Royal Society a paper in which, to use 

 the words of Mr. Darwin, " he distinctly recognises the principle 

 of natural selection ; and this is the first recognition that has 

 been indicated." The thoroughness and skill with which Wells 

 pursued his work, and the obvious independence of his character, 

 rendered him long ago a favourite with me ; and it gave me the 

 liveliest pleasure to .alight upon this .additional testimony to his 

 penetration. Prof Grant, Mr. Patrick Matthew, Von Buch, the 

 author of the "Vestiges," D'Halloy, and others,* by the enun- 

 ciatii^n of views more or less clear and correct, showed that 

 the question h,ad been fermenting long prior to the year 185S, 

 when Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace simultaneously but inde- 

 pendently placed their closely concurrent views upon the subject 

 before the Linnean Society. 



These papers were followed in 1859 by the publication of the 

 first edition of " The Origin of Species." All great things come 

 slowly to the birth. Copernicus, as I informed you, pondered 

 his great work for thirtv-three years. Newton for nearly twenty 

 years kept the idea of Gravitation before his mind ; for twenty 

 years also he dwelt upon his discovery of Fluxions, and doubt- 

 less v.-ould have continued to make it the object of his private 

 thought had he not fiiund that Leibnitz was upon his track. 

 Darwin for two-and-twenty years pondered the problem of the 

 origin of species, and doubtless he would have continued to do 

 so had he not found Wallace upon his track.t A concentrated 

 but full and powerful epitome ot his labours was the consequence. 

 The book was by no means an easy one ; and probably not one 

 in every score of those who then attacked it had read its pages 

 through, or were competent to grasp their significance if they 

 had. I do not say this merely to discredit them ; for there were 

 in tho?e days some really eminent scientific men, entirely raisetl 

 above the heat of po]3uIar prejudice, willing to accept any con- 

 clusion that science had to offer, ]irovided it was duly backed by 

 fact and argument, and who entirely mistook Mr. Darwin's views. 

 In fact the work needed an expounder ; and it foimd one in Mr. 

 Huxley. I know nothing more admirable in the way of scien- 

 tific exposition than those early articles of his on the origm of 

 species. He swept the curve of discussion through the really 

 significant points of the subject, enriched his exposition with 

 profound original remarks and reflections, often summing up in 

 a single pithy sentence an argument which a less compact mind 

 would have spread over paoes. But there is one impression 

 made by the book itself which no exposition of it, however lumi- 

 nous, can convey ; and that is the impression of the vast amount 

 of labour, both of observation and of thought, implied in its 

 production. Let us glance at its principles. 



It is conceded on all hands that what are called varieties are 

 continu.ally produced. The rule is probably without exception. 

 No chick anil no child is in all respects and particulars the coun- 

 terpart of its brother or sister ; and in such differences we have 

 " variety" incipient. No natur.alist could tell how far this vari- 



« In 1855 Mr. Herliert Spencer ("Principles of Psychology'," 2nd edit, 

 vol. i. p. 4(15) expressed •' the belief that life under all its forms has ari.<en by 

 an unbroken evolution, and through the instrumentality of what are called 

 natural causes." 



t The behaviour of Mr. Wallace in relation to this subject his been dig- 

 nified in the highest degree. 



