"Lyell,[130] with perfect right, claims this position for himself. He speaks of having 'advocated a law of continuity even in the organic world, so far as possible without adopting Lamarck's theory of transmutation....
"'But while I taught,' Lyell goes on, 'that as often as certain forms of animals and plants disappeared, for reasons quite intelligible to us, others took their place by virtue of a causation which was beyond our comprehension; it remained for Darwin to accumulate proof that there is no break between the incoming and the outgoing species, that they are the work of evolution, and not of special creation.... I had certainly prepared the way in this country, in six editions of my work before the Vestiges of Creation appeared in 1842 [1844], for the reception of Darwin's gradual and insensible evolution of species.'"
Mr. Huxley continues:—
"If one reads any of the earlier editions of the Principles carefully (especially by the light of the interesting series of letters recently published by Sir Charles Lyell's biographer), it is easy to see that, with all his energetic opposition to Lamarck, on the one hand, and to the ideal quasi-progressionism of Agassiz, on the other, Lyell, in his own mind, was strongly disposed to account for the origination of all past and present species of living things by natural causes. But he would have liked, at the same time, to keep the name of creation for a natural process which he imagined to be incomprehensible."
The passage above given refers to the influence of Lyell in preparing men's minds for belief in the Origin, but I cannot doubt that it "smoothed the way" for the author of that work in his early searchings, as well as for his followers. My father spoke prophetically when he wrote the dedication to Lyell of the second edition of the Journal of Researches (1845).
"To Charles Lyell, Esq., F.R.S., this second edition is dedicated with grateful pleasure—as an acknowledgment that the chief part of whatever scientific merit this journal and the other works of the author may possess, has been derived from studying the well-known and admirable Principles of Geology."
Professor Judd, in some reminiscences of my father which he was so good as to give me, quotes him as saying that, "It was the reading of the Principles of Geology which did most towards moulding his mind and causing him to take up the line of investigation to which his life was devoted."
The rôle that Lyell played as a pioneer makes his own point of view as to evolution all the more remarkable. As the late H. C. Watson wrote to my father (December 21, 1859):—
Now these novel views are brought fairly before the scientific public, it seems truly remarkable how so many of them could have failed to see their right road sooner. How could Sir C. Lyell, for instance, for thirty years read, write, and think, on the subject of species and their succession, and yet constantly look down the wrong road!