ed.
The _Origin_ provided us with the working hypothesis we sought.
Moreover, it did us the immense service of freeing us for ever
from the dilemma--refuse to accept the creation hypothesis, and
what have you to propose that can be accepted by any cautious
reasoner? In 1857 I had no answer ready, and I do not think that
anyone else had. A year later, we reproached ourselves with
dulness for being perplexed by such an enquiry. My reflection,
when I first made myself master of the central idea of the
_Origin_ was, 'how exceedingly stupid not to have thought of
that.' I suppose that Columbus's companions said much the same
when he made the egg to stand on end. The facts of variability,
of the struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions, were
notorious enough; but none of us had suspected that the road to
the heart of the species problem lay through them, until Darwin
and Wallace dispelled the darkness, and the beacon-fire of the
_Origin_ guided the benighted.

"Whether the particular shape which the doctrine of evolution,
as applied to the organic world, took in Darwin's hands, would
prove to be final or not, was, to me, a matter of indifference.
In my earliest criticisms of the _Origin_ I ventured to point out
that its logical foundation was insecure so long as experiments
in selective breeding had not produced varieties which were more
or less infertile; and that insecurity remains up to the present
time. But, with any and every critical doubt which my sceptical
ingenuity could suggest, the Darwinian hypothesis remained
incomparably more probable than the creation hypothesis. And if
we had none of us been able to discern the paramount significance
of some of the most patent and notorious of natural facts, until
they were, so to speak, thrust under our noses, what force
remained in the dilemma--creation or nothing? It was obvious
that, hereafter, the probability would be immensely greater that
the links of natural causation were hidden from our purblind
eyes, than that natural causation should be unable to produce all
the phenomena of nature. The only rational course for those who
had no other object than the attainment of truth, was to accept
'Darwinism' as a working hypothesis, and see what could be made
of it. Either it would p