t the wonder is that it should not have been hit upon long before. Or
rather, I should say, the wonder is that its immense and immeasurable
importance should not have been previously recognised. For, since the
publication of this idea by Darwin and Wallace, it has been found that
its main features had already occurred to at least two other
minds--namely, Dr. Wells in 1813, and Mr. Patrick Matthew in 1831. But
neither of these writers perceived that in the few scattered sentences
which they had written upon the subject they had struck the key-note of
organic nature, and resolved one of the principal chords of the
universe. Still more remarkable is the fact that Mr. Herbert
Spencer--notwithstanding his great powers of abstract thought and his
great devotion of those powers to the theory of evolution, when as yet
this theory was scorned by science--still more remarkable, I say, is the
fact that Mr. Herbert Spencer should have missed what now appears so
obvious an idea. But most remarkable of all is the fact that Dr.
Whewell, with all his stores of information on the history of the
inductive sciences, and with all his acumen on the matter of scientific
method, should not only have conceived the idea of natural selection,
but expressly stated it as a logically possible explanation of the
origin of species, and yet have so stated it merely for the purpose of
dismissing it with contempt[26]. This, I think, is most remarkable,
because it serves to prove how very far men's minds at that time must
have been from entertaining, as in any way antecedently probable, the
doctrine of transmutation. In order to show this I will here quote one
passage from the writings of Whewell, and another from a distinguished
French naturalist referred to by him.

[26] For quotations, see Note A.

In 1846 Whewell wrote:--

Not only is the doctrine of the transmutation of species in itself
disproved by the best physiological reasonings, but the additional
assumptions which are requisite to enable its advocates to apply it
to the explanation of the geological and other phenomena of the
earth, are altogether gratuitous and fantastical[27].

[27] whewell, _indications of the creator_, 2nd ed., 1846.

Then he quotes with approval the following opinion:--

Against this hypothesis, which, up to the present time, I regard as
purely gratuitous, and likely to turn geologists out of the sound
and excellent r