130. TO C. LYELL. 2, Hesketh Terrace, Torquay [August 2nd, 1861].

I declare that you read the reviews on the "Origin" more carefully than
I do. I agree with all your remarks. The point of correlation struck me
as well put, and on varieties growing together; but I have already begun
to put things in train for information on this latter head, on which
Bronn also enlarges. With respect to sexuality, I have often speculated
on it, and have always concluded that we are too ignorant to speculate:
no physiologist can conjecture why the two elements go to form a new
being, and, more than that, why nature strives at uniting the two
elements from two individuals. What I am now working at in my orchids is
an admirable illustration of the law. I should certainly conclude that
all sexuality had descended from one prototype. Do you not underrate the
degree of lowness of organisation in which sexuality occurs--viz., in
Hydra, and still lower in some of the one-celled free confervae which
"conjugate," which good judges (Thwaites) believe is the simplest form
of true sexual generation? (130/1. See Letter 97.) But the whole case is
a mystery.

There is another point on which I have occasionally wished to say a few
words. I believe you think with Asa Gray that I have not allowed enough
for the stream of variation having been guided by a higher power. I have
had lately a good deal of correspondence on this head. Herschel, in his
"Physical Geography" (130/2. "Physical Geography of the Globe," by Sir
John F.W. Herschel, Edinburgh, 1861. On page 12 Herschel writes of
the revelations of Geology pointing to successive submersions and
reconstructions of the continents and fresh races of animals and plants.
He refers to a "great law of change" which has not operated either by
a gradually progressing variation of species, nor by a sudden and
total abolition of one race...The following footnote on page 12 of
the "Physical Geography" was added in January, 1861: "This was written
previous to the publication of Mr. Darwin's work on the "Origin of
Species," a work which, whatever its merit or ingenuity, we cannot,
however, consider as having disproved the view taken in the text. We
can no more accept the principle of arbitrary and casual variation
and natural selection as a sufficient account, per se, of the past
and present organic world, than we can receive the Laputan method of
composing books (pushed a outrance) as a sufficient one of Shakespeare