s so well defined;
and, reversing the apostolic precept to be all things to all men, I
usually defended the tenability of the received doctrines, when I had
to do with the transmutationists; and stood up for the possibility of
transmutation among the orthodox--thereby, no doubt, increasing an
already current, but quite undeserved, reputation for needless
combativeness.

I remember, in the course of my first interview with Mr. Darwin,
expressing my belief in the sharpness of the lines of demarcation
between natural groups and in the absence of transitional forms, with
all the confidence of youth and imperfect knowledge. I was not aware,
at that time, that he had then been many years brooding over the
species-question; and the humorous smile which accompanied his gentle
answer, that such was not altogether his view, long haunted and puzzled
me. But it would seem that four or five years' hard work had enabled
me to understand what it meant; for Lyell ('Life and Letters,' volume
ii. page 212.), writing to Sir Charles Bunbury (under date of April 30,
1856), says:--

"When Huxley, Hooker, and Wollaston were at Darwin's last week they
(all four of them) ran a tilt against species--further, I believe, than
they are prepared to go."

I recollect nothing of this beyond the fact of meeting Mr. Wollaston;
and except for Sir Charles' distinct assurance as to "all four," I
should have thought my "outrecuidance" was probably a counterblast to
Wollaston's conservatism. With regard to Hooker, he was already, like
Voltaire's Habbakuk, "capable du tout" in the way of advocating
Evolution.

As I have already said, I imagine that most of those of my
contemporaries who thought seriously about the matter, were very much
in my own state of mind--inclined to say to both Mosaists and
Evolutionists, "a plague on both your houses!" and disposed to turn
aside from an interminable and apparently fruitless discussion, to
labour in the fertile fields of ascertainable fact. And I may,
therefore, further suppose that the publication of the Darwin and
Wallace papers in 1858, and still more that of the 'Origin' in 1859,
had the effect upon them of the flash of light, which to a man who has
lost himself in a dark night, suddenly reveals a road which, whether it
takes him straight home or not, certainly goes his way. That which we
were looking for, and could not find, was a hypothesis respecting the
origin of known organic forms, which assumed th