l8o LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xiii 



is impossible. I confine myself to what must be regarded as 

 a modest and reasonable request for some particle of evidence 

 that the existing species of animals and plants did originate in 

 that way, as a condition of my belief in a statement which 

 appears to me to be highly improbable. 



And, by way of being perfectly fair, I had exactly the same 

 answer to give to the evolutionists of 1851-58. Within the 

 ranks of the biologists, at "that time, I met with nobody, except 

 Dr. Grant of University College, who had a word to say for 

 Evolution — and his advocacy was not calculated to advance the 

 cause. Outside these ranks, the only person known to me whose 

 knowledge and capacity compelled respect, and who was, at the 

 same time, a thorough-going evolutionist, was Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer, whose acquaintance I made, I think, in 1852, and then 

 entered into the bonds of a friendship which, I am happy to 

 think, has known no interruption. Many and prolonged were 

 the battles we fought on this topic. But even my friend's rare 

 dialectic skill and copiousness of apt illustration could not drive 

 me from my agnostic position. I took my stand upon two 

 grounds : — Firstly, that up to that time, the evidence in favour 

 of transmutation was wholly insufficient; and secondly, that no 

 suggestion respecting the causes of transmutation assumed, 

 which had been made, was in any way adequate to explain the 

 phenomena. Looking back at the state of knowledge at that 

 time, I really do not see that any other conclusion was justi- 

 fiable. 



In those days I had never even heard of Treviranus' Biolo- 

 gie. However, I had studied Lamarck attentively, and I had 

 read the Vestiges with due care ; but neither of them afforded 

 me any good ground for changing my negative and critical atti- 

 tude. As for the Vestiges, I confess that the book simply irri- 

 tated me by the prodigious ignorance and thoroughly unscientific 

 habit of mind manifested by the writer. If it had any influence 

 on me at all, it set me against Evolution ; and the only review I 

 ever have qualms of conscience about, on the ground of need- 

 less savagery, is one I wrote on the Vestiges while under that 

 influence. . . . 



But, by a curious irony of fate, the same influence which led 

 me to put as little faith in modern speculations on this subject as 

 in the venerable traditions recorded in the first two chapters of 

 Genesis, was perhaps more potent than any other in keeping 

 alive a sort of pious conviction that Evolution, after all, would 

 turn out true. I have recently read afresh the first edition of 



