CHAPTER XVI.

THE INFLUENCE OF DARWIN UPON LYELL (1859–64).

In considering the reception of the “Origin of Species,” it will be well first to show its effect upon Darwin’s intimate scientific friends, most of whom had been familiar with his work for many years, and then to deal with its effects upon biologists generally, especially those of Darwin’s own country.

The gradual strengthening of Darwin’s influence over his old teacher Lyell, is one of the most interesting episodes in the personal history of the scientific men of this century.

[Sidenote: LYELL’S SLOW CONVERSION.]

Lyell, after reading the proof-sheets of the “Origin,” wrote on October 3rd, 1859, praising the work very warmly, and suggesting a few improvements, some of which were adopted. Lyell hesitated to accept the theory, because he saw clearly that it would be impossible to stop short at the human species, while a common origin of men and beasts was distasteful to him. Thus, he said:--

“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, instead of a purely unknown and imaginary one, such as the word ‘Creation,’ all the consequences must follow.”

To this letter Darwin replied (October 11th) at great length, in a most instructive letter, arguing in considerable detail on all the points alluded to by Lyell. He evidently thought that Lyell’s opinion was of the utmost importance for the success of Natural Selection. “If ever you are [perverted],” he wrote at the end of the letter, “I shall know that the theory of Natural Selection is, in the main, safe.”

About this time Darwin seems to have heard that Lyell had made up his mind to admit the doctrine of evolution into a new edition of the “Manual,” and he wrote (November 23rd):--

“I honour you most sincerely. To have maintained in the position of a master, one side of a question for thirty years, and then deliberately give it up, is a fact to which I much doubt whether the records of science offer a parallel.”

Lyell’s public confession of faith was, however, not to be made for some years, and Darwin’s letter was a little premature.

Space will not permit me to quote from the long correspondence with Lyell in the years following the appearance of the “Origin,” although these letters are of the deepest interest, and deal in the most luminous manner with the difficulties of natural selection and evolution, as they appeared to one of the acutest intellects of that time. The letters soon began to produce an effect, and Darwin wrote (September 26th, 1860) to Asa Gray:--

“I can perceive in my immense correspondence with Lyell, who objected to much at first, that he has, perhaps unconsciously to himself, converted himself very much during the last six months, and I think this is the case even with Hooker. This fact gives me far more confidence than any other fact.”

Later on Darwin evidently became a little annoyed that Lyell still delayed to declare his belief one way or the other. Thus he wrote to Asa Gray (May 11th, 1863):--

“You speak of Lyell as a judge; now what I complain of is that he declines to be a judge.... I have sometimes almost wished that Lyell had pronounced against me. When I say ‘me,’ I only mean _change of species by descent_. That seems to me the turning-point. Personally, of course, I care much about Natural Selection; but that seems to me utterly unimportant, compared to the question of Creation _or_ Modification.”

Shortly before this date, on February 24th, he wrote to Hooker in much the same style. These communications were called forth by the appearance of “The Antiquity of Man,” and it is clear that Darwin’s disappointment at Lyell’s suspended judgment was due to their correspondence, which had encouraged him to expect some definite opinion on the question. “From all my communications with him, I must ever think that he has really entirely lost faith in the immortality of species,” he wrote in his letter to Hooker. On March 6th he wrote to Lyell himself, expressing his disappointment, and again a few days later, rather complaining that his work was treated as a modification of Lamarck’s:--

“This way of putting the case ... closely connects Wallace’s and my views with what I consider, after two deliberate readings, as a wretched book, and one from which (I well remember my surprise) I gained nothing.”

When the second edition of “The Antiquity of Man” appeared in a few months, there was a significant change in one sentence:--

“Yet we ought by no means to undervalue the importance of the step which will have been made, should it hereafter become the generally received opinion of men of science (as I fully expect it will) that the past changes of the organic world have been brought about by the subordinate agency of such causes as Variation and Natural Selection.”

The words in parentheses had been added, and constituted Lyell’s first public expression of an opinion in favour of Darwin’s views.

About this time an article appeared in the _Athenæum_ (March 28th, 1863), attacking the opinions in favour of evolution contained in Dr. Carpenter’s work on Foraminifera, and supporting spontaneous generation. This was one of the rare occasions on which Darwin entered into controversy, and he wrote attacking spontaneous generation, and pointing out the numerous classes of facts which are connected by an intelligible thread of reasoning by means of his theory. In this letter he quoted the altered sentence from the second edition of the “Antiquity.” Darwin’s letter was answered in an article (May 2nd) in which it was argued that _any_ theory of descent would connect the various classes of facts equally well. To this Darwin replied in a characteristic letter. It was evident that he was most reluctant to continue the controversy, but thought it fair to admit publicly the force of his opponent’s arguments.

[Sidenote: ACCESSION OF LYELL.]

In 1864 the Copley Medal of the Royal Society was given to Darwin. At the anniversary dinner of the Society, after the meeting at which the medals are presented by the President, Sir Charles Lyell in his speech made a “confession of faith” as to the “Origin.” Darwin was prevented by illness from receiving the medal in person and from being present at the dinner.

The tenth edition of the “Principles” was published in 1867 and 1868, and in it Lyell clearly stated his belief in evolution. Sir Joseph Hooker, in his presidential address to the British Association at Norwich in 1868, eloquently spoke of the “new foundation” with which Lyell had under-pinned the edifice he had raised, and had thus rendered it “not only more secure, but more harmonious in its proportion than it was before.” Wallace, too, in an article in the _Quarterly Review_ (April, 1869), spoke with equal eloquence and force of the significance of Lyell’s change of opinion.

Lyell’s death took place in 1875, eleven years after his definite acceptance of Darwin’s views. Darwin, in writing to Miss Arabella Buckley (now Mrs. Fisher, formerly secretary to Sir Charles Lyell), fully acknowledged the deep debt which he owed to Lyell’s teachings: “I never forget that almost everything which I have done in science I owe to the study of his great works.” Huxley says in his obituary of Charles Darwin (reprinted in “Darwiniana,” 1893, p. 268): “It is hardly too much to say that Darwin’s greatest work is the outcome of the unflinching application to Biology of the leading idea and the method applied in the ‘Principles’ to Geology.” Every biologist who realises--as who can help realising?--the boundless opportunities which Darwin’s work has opened for him, will feel that he too owes a deep personal debt to Darwin’s great teacher.