ed the day before the
_Origin_ was published, saying that he had finished the volume, and
stating that it had completely convinced him of the fact of evolution,
and that he fully accepted natural selection as a "true cause for the
production of species." Darwin, in a letter to Wallace, telling of his
doubts and fears concerning the reception of his book, had added the
postscript: "I think I told you before that Hooker is a complete
convert. If I can convert Huxley, I shall be content." When he
received Huxley's letter he replied at once:

"Like a good Catholic who has received extreme unction, I can now
sing _Nunc Dimittis_. I should have been more than contented with
one quarter of what you have said. Exactly fifteen months ago,
when I first put pen to paper for this volume, I had awful
misgivings, and thought perhaps I had deluded myself, like so
many have done; and I then fixed in my mind three judges, on
whose decision I determined mentally to abide. The judges were
Lyell, Hooker, and yourself. It was this which made me so
excessively anxious for your verdict. I am now contented, and can
sing my _Nunc Dimittis_."

The effect of the new theory on Huxley's mind has been expressed most
fully and clearly by himself:

"I imagine that most of my contemporaries who thought seriously
about the matter were very much in my own state of mind--inclined
to say to 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 that of a 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 the operation of
no causes but such as could be proved to be actually at work. We
wanted, not to pin our faith to that or any other speculation,
but to get hold of clear and definite conceptions which could be
brought face to face with facts and have their validity test