that Columbus's companions said much the same when he made the
egg 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 incompetent 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 prove its capacity to elucidate
the facts of organic life or it would break down under the
strain. This was surely the dictate of common sense, and for
once common sense carried the day.

Mention has been made of the instant support he was able to lend the
_Origin_ in the _Times_ review of the book, and the extension of its
doctrines in regard to man. Even before the book appeared, however, he
began to act as what Darwin laughingly called his "general agent."
His address on "Persistent Types" (June, 1859) aimed at clearing up in
advance one of the obvious objections raised against acceptance of the
doctrine of Evolution--namely, how is i