1909-] BRYCE— REMINISCENCES OF CHARLES DARWIN. ix 



him, a little further off than you votaries of the natural sciences do, 

 but not less sincerely and not less reverentially. 



Now, ladies and gentlemen, I am asked to say a few words to 

 you about the effect which was produced by Mr. Darwin's writings 

 when they first appeared in England. I am, unfortunately, old 

 enough to be able to remember that time : and one of the few com- 

 pensations that one finds in advancing years is the opportunity to 

 call upon for the benefit of friends recollections which are still fresh 

 of days now so far past that they are becoming matters of written 

 history. The effect of the " Origin of Species " was extraordinary. 

 There has been no such effect before or since, in the way it stirred 

 men's minds in England. I recollect that in or about the year 1853 

 the British Association for the Advancement of Science held its 

 annual meeting in Glasgow, and I was taken by my father, who was 

 himself a scientific man, to attend that meeting. I was only a boy of 

 fifteen, but he, very properly, thought that you cannot begin too soon 

 to endeavor to bring the youthful mind into contact with science and 

 men of science, and, accordingly, he took me to attend the meetings 

 of the Association. I remember that at an evening meeting there 

 was delivered a lecture, supposed to be of a comparatively popular 

 kind, intended to bring scientific conceptions to the minds of those 

 members of the association who were interested in science, but not 

 skilled scientific students. The lecture was upon Species, and it was 

 delivered by Dr. William B. Carpenter, who was a well-known and 

 much respected scientific writer in that time, careful and thoughtful, 

 though not a discoverer. The lecturer and the audience and 

 the impression come back to me as if it was yesterday. He 

 brought out with great fulness and clearness all the difficulties that 

 attach to every hypothesis about the origin of species. He stated 

 the old familiar doctrine of separate creation, and showed the ob- 

 jections to it. He threw out various conjectures upon the subject, 

 and explained the objections that attached to each one of the various 

 hypotheses advanced. And he left us as much in the dark as we 

 were before. This was startling to a youthful and ingenuous mind, 

 who had expected to be told what to think. We who were not in 

 the inner scientific circles said to ourselves " Why in the world is this 

 lecture given to us, if we are, after all, to be left with no positive 



