pter we
are considering. The bare conviction that a creation of species has
taken place, whether once or many times, so long as it is unconnected
with our organical sciences, is a tenet of Natural Theology rather than
of Physical Philosophy." (Whewell's 'History,' volume iii. page 639-640
(Edition 2, 1847.))

The earlier part of this criticism appears perfectly just and
appropriate; but, from the concluding paragraph, Whewell evidently
imagines that by "creation" Lyell means a preternatural intervention of
the Deity; whereas the letter to Herschel shows that, in his own mind,
Lyell meant natural causation; and I see no reason to doubt (The
following passages in Lyell's letters appear to me decisive on this
point:--

To Darwin, October 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 unknown and imaginary one, such as the word
'creation,' all the consequences must follow."

To Darwin, March 15, 1863 (volume ii. page 365).

"I remember that it was the conclusion 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
conviction 'that Cuvier thought species not real, but that science
could not advance without assuming that they were so.'"

To Hooker, March 9, 1863 (volume ii. page 361), in reference to
Darwin's feeling about the 'Antiquity of Man.'

"He [Darwin] seems much disappointed 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 unbroken descent from the brutes, and I find I am
half converting not a few who were in arms against Darwin, 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 day, when I believed with Pascal in
the theory, as Hallam terms it, of 'the arch-angel ruined.'"

See the same sentimen