ATTACKS ON THE ' ORIGIN ' 513 
slur upon all who substitute hypotheses for strict inductions, 
and as he expressed himself in regard to some of C. D.'s 
suggestions as revolting to his own sense of right and wrong, 
and as Dr. Clark,^ who followed him, spoke so unnecessarily 
severely against Darwin's views, I got up, as Sedgwick had 
alluded to me, and stuck up for Darwdn as well as I could, 
refusing to allow that he was guided by any but truthful 
motives, and declaring that he himself beheved he was 
exalting and not debasing our views of a Creator, in attri- 
buting to him a power of imposing laws on the Organic 
World by which to do his work, as effectually as his laws 
imposed on the inorganic had done it in the Mineral 
Kingdom. 
I beheve I succeeded in diminishing, if not entirely 
removing, the chances of Darwin's being prejudged by 
many who take their cue in such cases according to the views 
of those they suppose may know something of the matter. 
Yesterday at my lectures I alluded to the subject, and showed 
how frequently Naturahsts were at fault in regarding as 
s'pecies, forms which had (in some cases) been shown to be 
varieties, and how legitimately Darwin had deduced his 
inferences from positive experiment. Indeed I had on 
Monday rephed to a sneer (I don't mean from Sedgwick) 
at his pigeon results, by declaring that the case necessitated 
an appeal to such domestic experiments, and that this was 
the legitimate and best way of proceeding for the detection 
of those laws which we are endeavouring to discover. 
I do not disguise my own opinion that Darwin has pressed 
his hypothesis too far, but at the same time I assert my belief 
that his Book is (as Owen described it to me) the ' Book of 
the Day.' I suspect the passages I marked in the Edinburgh 
Beview for the illumination of Sedgwick have produced an 
impression upon him to a certain extent. When I had had 
my say, Sedgwick got up to explain, in a very few words, his 
good opinion of Darwin, but that he wished it to be understood 
1 William Clark, Professor of Anatomy. In the Life of Charles Darwin, 
ii. 308, C. D.; writing to Lyell, quotes Henslow as informing him that Sedgwick 
and then Clark attacked his book at the Cambridge Philosophical Society. To 
this Sir F. Darwin adds a note : ' My father seems to have misunderstood his 
informant. I am assured by [the late] Mr. J. W. Clark that his father (Prof. 
Clark) did not support Sedgwick in the attack.' The inference seems to be 
that he did not support Sedgwick's denunciations of the Origiii on moral as 
apart from scientific grounds. 
