l859 BEACON-FIRE OF THE ORIGIN jg-, 



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

 not to have thought of that ! " I suppose that Columbus' com- 

 panions 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 prob- 

 lem lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the 

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

 nighted. 



Whether the particular shape which the doctrine of Evolu- 

 tion, as applied to the organic world, took in Darwin's hands, 

 would prove to be final or not, was to me a matter of indiffer- 

 ence. In my earliest criticisms of the " Origin " I ventured to 

 point out that its logical foundation was insecure so long as 

 experirhents 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 cre- 

 ation hypothesis. And if we had none of us been able to dis- 

 cern the paramount significance of some of the most patent 

 and notorious of natural facts, until they were, so to speak, 

 thrust under our noses, what force remained in the dilemma — 

 creation or nothing? It was obvious that hereafter the proba- 

 bility would be immensely greater, that the links of natural 

 causation were hidden from our purblind eyes, than that natural 

 causation should be incompetent to produce all the phenomena 

 of nature. The only rational course for those who had no other 

 object than the attainment of truth was to accept " Darwinism " 

 as a working hypothesis and see what could be made of it. 

 Either it would prove its capacity to elucidate the facts of 

 organic life, or it would break down under the strain. This 

 was surely the dictate of common sense, and, for once, common 

 sense carried the day. 



Even before the " Origin " actually came out, Huxley 

 had begun to act as what Darwin afterwards called his " gen- 

 eral agent." He began to prepare the way for the accept- 

 ance of the theory of evolution by discussing, for instance, 

 one of the most obvious difficulties, namely. How is it that 

 if evolution is ever progressive, progress is not universal? 

 It was a point with respect to which Darwin himself wrote 

 soon after the publication of the " Origin " : — " Judging 

 13 



