and Wallace, Asa Gray and even Agassiz, each in his own sphere, were coming closer and closer to a perception of that secret which was first to reveal itself clearly to the patient and humble genius of Darwin.  In the year before, in 1856, Darwin, under pressure from Lyell, had begun that modest statement of the new revelation, that ’abstract of an essay’, which developed so mightily into ‘The Origin of Species’.  Wollaston’s ‘Variation of Species’ had just appeared, and had been a nine days’ wonder in the wilderness.

On the other side, the reactionaries, although never dreaming of the fate which hung over them, had not been idle.  In 1857 the astounding question had for the first time been propounded with contumely, ‘What, then, did we come from an orang-outang?’ The famous ‘Vestiges of Creation’ had been supplying a sugar-and-water panacea for those who could not escape from the trend of evidence, and who yet clung to revelation.  Owen was encouraging reaction by resisting, with all the strength of his prestige, the theory of the mutability of species.

In this period of intellectual ferment, as when a great political revolution is being planned, many possible adherents were confidentially tested with hints and encouraged to reveal their bias in a whisper.  It was the notion of Lyell, himself a great mover of men, that, before the doctrine of natural selection was given to a world which would be sure to lift up at it a howl of execration, a certain bodyguard of sound and experienced naturalists, expert in the description of species, should be privately made aware of its tenor.  Among those who were thus initiated, or approached with a view towards possible illumination, was my Father.  He was spoken to by Hooker, and later on by Darwin, after meetings of the Royal Society in the summer of 1857.

My Father’s attitude towards the theory of natural selection was critical in his career, and oddly enough, it exercised an immense influence on my own experience as a child.  Let it be admitted at once, mournful as the admission is, that every instinct in his intelligence went out at first to greet the new light.  It had hardly done so, when a recollection of the opening chapter of ‘Genesis’ checked it at the outset.  He consulted with Carpenter, a great investigator, but one who was fully as incapable as himself of remodelling his ideas with regard to the old, accepted hypotheses.  They both determined, on various grounds, to have nothing to do with the terrible theory, but to hold steadily to the law of the fixity of species.  It was exactly at this juncture that we left London, and the slight and occasional but always extremely salutary personal intercourse with men of scientific leading which my Father had enjoyed at the British Museum and at the Royal Society came to an end.  His next act was to burn his ships down to the last beam and log out of which a raft could have been made.  By a strange act of wilfulness, he closed the doors upon himself forever.