“After service I went to Harley Street, Sir Charles, I thought, looking better than for a long time. He thinks the caves of Aurignac can never be used as evidence; the witnesses were all tampered with from the first. He saw a skeleton found at Mentone 15 feet deep, which he thinks of the same age as the Gibraltar caves. The legs were distinctly platycnemic, and there was also a curious process on the front of the shoulder—like the breast of a chicken. The skull was full-sized and good. I asked him how he accounted for the fact that with the best will in the world we could not find the least difference between the most ancient skulls and our own? He said the theory had been suggested that all the first growth went to brain, so that very early men acquired large brains, as was necessary. This is not very Darwinian, is it?”
It is the destiny of all books of Science to be soon superseded and superannuated, while those of Literature may live for all time. I suppose Sir Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology has undergone, or will undergo, this fate ere long; but the magnanimity and candour which made him, in issuing the 10th edition of that book, abjure all his previous arguments against Evolution and candidly own himself Darwin’s convert, was an evidence of genuine loyalty to truth which I trust can never be quite forgotten. He was, as Prof. Huxley called him, the “greatest Geologist of his day,”—the man “who found Geology an infant science feebly contending for a few scattered truths, and left it a giant, grasping all the ages of the past.” But to my memory he will always be something more than an eminent man of Science. He was the type of what such men ought to be; with the simplicity, humility and gentleness which should be characteristic of the true student of Nature. Of the priestlike arrogance of some representatives of the modern scientific spirit he had not a taint. In one of his last letters to me, he said:
“I am told that the same philosophy which is opposed to a belief in a future state undertakes to prove that every one of our acts and thoughts are the necessary result of antecedent events, and conditions and that there can be no such thing as Free-will in man. I am quite content that both doctrines should stand on the same foundation; for as I cannot help being convinced that I have the power of exerting Free-will, however great a mystery the possibility of this may be, so the continuance of a spiritual life may be true, however inexplicable or incapable of proof.
“I am told by some that if any of our traditionary beliefs make us happier and lead us to estimate humanity more highly, we ought to be careful not to endeavour to establish any scientific truths which would lessen and lower our estimate of Man’s place in Nature; in short, we should do nothing to disturb any man’s faith, if it be a delusion which increases his happiness.
“But I hope and believe that the discovery and propagation of every truth, and the dispelling of every error tends to improve and better the condition of man, though the act of reforming old opinions causes so much pain and misery.”
It will give me pleasure if these few reminiscences of my honoured friend send fresh readers to his excellent and spirited biography by his sister-in-law Mrs. Lyell, Lady Lyell’s sister, who was also his brother, Colonel Lyell’s wife; the mother of Sir Leonard Lyell, M.P.
I saw a great deal of Dr. Colenso during the years he spent in England; I think about 1864–5. He lived near us in a small house in Sussex Place, Glo’ster Road (not Sussex Place, Onslow Square), where his large family of sons and daughters practised the piano below stairs and produced detonations with chemicals above, while visitors called incessantly, interrupting his arduous and anxious studies! He was in all senses an iron-grey man. Iron-grey hair, pale, strong face, fine but somewhat rigid figure, a powerful, strong-willed, resolute man, if ever there were one, and an honest one also, if such there have been on earth. His friend, Sir George W. Cox, who I may venture to call mine also, has, in his admirable biography, printed the three most important letters which the Bishop of Natal wrote to me, and I can add nothing to Sir George’s just estimate of the character of this modern Confessor. I will give here, however, another letter I received from him at the very beginning of our intercourse, when I had only met him once (at Dr. Carpenter’s table); and also a record in a letter to a friend of a tête-à-tête conversation with him, further on. I have always thought that he made a mistake in returning to Natal, and that his true place would have been at the head of a Christian-Theistic Church in London:—
“23, Sussex Place, Kensington,
“Feb. 6th, 1863.
“My Dear Miss Cobbe,