THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' 



193 



causation ; and I see no reason to doubt * that, if Sir Charles 

 could have avoided the inevitable corollary of the pithecoid 

 origin of man for which, to the end of his life, he entertained 

 a profound antipathy he would have advocated the efficiency 

 of causes now in operation to bring about the condition of the 

 organic world, as stoutly as he championed that doctrine in 

 reference to inorganic nature. 



The fact is, that a discerning eye might have seen that 

 some form or other of the doctrine of transmutation was 

 inevitable, from the time when the truth enunciated by William 



* The following passages in 

 Lyell's letters appear to me decisive 

 on this point : 



To Darwin, Oct. 3, 1859 (ii. 325), 

 on first reading the ' Origin.' 



" I have long seen most clearly 

 that if any concession is made, all 

 that you claim in your concluding 

 pages will follow. 



"It is this which has made me 

 so long hesitate, always feeling that 

 the case of Man and his Races, and 

 of other animals, and that of plants, 

 is one and the same, and that if 

 a vera causa be admitted for one 

 instant, [instead] of a purely un- 

 known and imaginary one, such as 

 the word ' creation,' all the conse- 

 quences must follow." 



To Darwin, March 15, 1863 

 (vol. ii. p. 365). 



" I remember that it was the con- 

 clusion he [Lamarck] came to about 

 man that fortified me thirty years 

 ago against the great impression 

 which his arguments at first made 

 on my mind, all the greater because 

 Constant PreVost, a pupil of Cuvier's 

 forty years ago, told me his con- 

 viction ' that Cuvier thought species 

 not real, but that science could not 



VOL. II. 



advance without assuming that they 

 were so.' " 



To Hooker, March 9, 1863 (vol. 

 ii. p. 361), in reference to Darwin's 

 feeling about the 'Antiquity of Man.' 



" He [Darwin] seems much dis- 

 appointed that I do not go farther 

 with him, or do not speak out 

 more. I can only say that I have 

 spoken out to the full extent of my 

 present convictions, and even beyond 

 my state of feeling as to man's un- 

 broken descent from the brutes, and 

 I find I am half converting not a 

 few who were in arms against Dar- 

 win, and are even now against 

 Huxley." He speaks of having had 

 to abandon " old and long cherished 

 ideas, which constituted the charm 

 to me of the theoretical part of the 

 science in my earlier days, when I 

 believed with Pascal in the theory, 

 as Hallam terms it, of ' the arch- 

 angel ruined.' " 



See the same sentiment in the 

 letter to Darwin, March n, 1863, 



P- 363 : 



" I think the old ' creation ' is 

 almost as much required as ever, 

 but of course it takes a new form 

 if Lamarck's views improved by 

 yours are adopted.'' 



O 



