[124] The duplicate type-specimens of my father's Cirripedes are in the Liverpool Free Public Museum, as I learn from the Rev. H. H. Higgins.
CHAPTER IX. THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.'
To give an account of the development of the chief work of my father's life—the Origin of Species, it will be necessary to return to an earlier date, and to weave into the story letters and other material, purposely omitted from the chapters dealing with the voyage and with his life at Down.
To be able to estimate the greatness of the work, we must know something of the state of knowledge on the species question at the time when the germs of the Darwinian theory were forming in my father's mind.
For the brief sketch which I can here insert, I am largely indebted to vol. ii. chapter v. of the Life and Letters—a discussion on the Reception of the Origin of Species which Mr. Huxley "was good enough to write for me, also to the masterly obituary essay on my father, which the same writer contributed to the Proceedings of the Royal Society."[125]
Mr. Huxley has well said[126]:
"To any one who studies the signs of the times, the emergence of the philosophy of Evolution, in the attitude of claimant to the throne of the world of thought, from the limbo of hated and, as many hoped, forgotten things, is the most portentous event of the nineteenth century."
In the autobiographical chapter, my father has given an account of his share in this great work: the present chapter does little more than expand that story.