species-mongering in 1850, one-half of Lamarck's arguments were
obsolete and the other half erroneous, or defective, in virtue of
omitting to deal with the various classes of evidence which had been
brought to light since his time. Moreover his one suggestion as to the
cause of the gradual modification of species--effort excited by change
of conditions--was, on the face of it, inapplicable to the whole
vegetable world. I do not think that any impartial judge who reads the
'Philosophie Zoologique' now, and who afterwards takes up Lyell's
trenchant and effectual criticism (published as far back as 1830), will
be disposed to allot to Lamarck a much higher place in the
establishment of biological evolution than that which Bacon assigns to
himself in relation to physical science generally,--buccinator tantum.
(Erasmus Darwin first promulgated Lamarck's fundamental conceptions,
and, with greater logical consistency, he had applied them to plants.
But the advocates of his claims have failed to show that he, in any
respect, anticipated the central idea of the 'Origin of Species.')

But, by a curious irony of fate, the same influence which led me to put
as little faith in modern speculations on this subject, as in the
venerable traditions recorded in the first two chapters of Genesis, was
perhaps more potent than any other in keeping alive a sort of pious
conviction that Evolution, after all, would turn out true. I have
recently read afresh the first edition of the 'Principles of Geology';
and when I consider that this remarkable book had been nearly thirty
years in everybody's hands, and that it brings home to any reader of
ordinary intelligence a great principle and a great fact--the
principle, that the past must be explained by the present, unless good
cause be shown to the contrary; and the fact, that, so far as our
knowledge of the past history of life on our globe goes, no such cause
can be shown (The same principle and the same fact guide the result
from all sound historical investigation. Grote's 'History of Greece'
is a product of the same intellectual movement as Lyell's
'Principles.')--I cannot but believe that Lyell, for others, as for
myself, was the chief agent for smoothing the road for Darwin. For
consistent uniformitarianism postulates evolution as much in the
organic as in the inorganic world. The origin of a new species by
other than ordinary agencies would be a vastly greater "catastrophe"
than any of