l62 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



doctrine is, therefore, in a word, to modify, not tlie 

 doctrine, but the form in which it is expressed." 



Postponing the story of the famous debate be- 

 tween Wilberforce and Huxley, the reception ac- 

 corded to the Origin of Species by Darwin's scien- 

 tific contemporaries may be noted. Herbert Spen- 

 cer's position, as will be shown later on, was already 

 distinctive: he was a Darwinian before Darwin. 

 Hooker, Huxley, — who said that he was prepared to 

 go to the stake, if needs be, in support of some parts 

 of the book, — Bates, and Lubbock were immediate 

 converts; so were Asa Gray and Lyell, but with 

 reservations, for Lyell, whose creed was Unitarian, 

 never wholly accepted the inclusion of man, " body 

 soul, and spirit," as the outcome of natural selection. 

 Henslow and Pictet went one mile, but refused to go 

 twain; Agassiz, Murray, and Harvey would have 

 none of the new heresy ; neither would Adam Sedg- 

 wick, who wrote a long protest to Darwin, couched 

 in loving terms, and ending with the hope that " we 

 shall meet in heaven." The attitude of Owen, if ap- 

 parently neutral or tentative in open conversation, 

 was, as an anonymous critic, deadly hostile. Al- 

 though it is not included in the Ust of his writings 

 given in the Life by his grandson, he is known to 

 have been the author of the critique on the Origin of 

 Species in the Edinburgh Review of April, i860. 



At the outset of the article he speaks of Darwin's 

 " seduction " of " several, perhaps the majority of our 

 younger naturalists " by the homoeopathic form of 



