'With Sir Charles I soon felt at home, owing to his refined and gentle manners, his fund of quiet humour, and his intense love and extensive knowledge of natural science. His great liberality of thought and wide general interests were also attractive to me; and although when he had once arrived at a definite conclusion, he held by it very tenaciously until a considerable body of well-ascertained facts could be adduced against it, yet he was always willing to listen to the arguments of his opponents, and to give them careful and repeated consideration[74].'
Of the influence of the Principles of Geology in leading him to evolution, he wrote:
'Along with Malthus I had read, and been even more deeply impressed by, Sir Charles Lyell's immortal Principles of Geology; which had taught me that the inorganic world—the whole surface of the earth, its seas and lands, its mountains and valleys, its rivers and lakes, and every detail of its climatic conditions—were and always had been in a continual state of slow modification. Hence it became obvious that the forms of life must have become continually adjusted to these changed conditions in order to survive. The succession of fossil remains throughout the whole geological series of rocks is the record of the change; and it became easy to see that the extreme slowness of these changes was such as to allow ample opportunity for the continuous automatic adjustment of the organic to the inorganic world, as well as of each organism to every other organism in the same area, by the simple processes of "variation and survival of the fittest." Thus was the fundamental idea of the "origin of species" logically formulated from the consideration of a series of well ascertained facts[75].'
Nor were the two men (who, like Aaron and Hur so steadily sustained the hands of Darwin in his long vigil), behind the two authors of Natural Selection themselves in their devotion to Lyell. How touching is Hooker's tribute of affection on the death of his friend, 'My loved, my best friend, for well nigh forty years of my life. To me the blank is fearful, for it never will, never can be filled up. The most generous sharer of my own and my family's hopes, joys, and sorrows, whose affection for me was truly that of a father and brother combined[76].'
And Huxley speaking of Lyell, the day after his death said, 'Sir Charles Lyell would be known in history as the greatest geologist of his time. Some days ago I went to my venerable friend, and put before him the results of the Challenger expedition. Nothing could then have been more touching than the conflict between the mind and the material body, the brain clear and comprehending all; while the lips could hardly express the views which the busy mind formed[77].'
How well do I recollect my last visit to Lyell a day or two after this farewell interview with Huxley, the glow of gratitude which lighted up the noble features as with trembling lips he told me how 'Huxley had repeated his whole Royal Institution lecture at his bedside.'
Huxley was a most devoted student of Lyell. Speaking to his fellow geologists in 1869 he said, 'Which of us has not thumbed every page of the Principles of Geology[78]?' and writing in 1887 on the reception of the Origin of Species, he said:—
'I have recently read afresh the first edition of the Principles of Geology; and when I consider that this remarkable book had been nearly thirty years in everybody's hands, and that it brings home to any reader of ordinary intelligence a great principle and a great fact—the principle, that the past must be explained by the present, unless good cause be shown to the contrary; and the fact, that, so far as our knowledge of the past history of life on our globe goes, no such cause can be shown—I cannot but believe that Lyell, for others, as for myself, was the chief agent in smoothing the road for Darwin. For consistent uniformitarianism postulates evolution as much in the organic as in the inorganic world. The origin of a new species by other than ordinary agencies would be a vastly greater 'catastrophe' than any of those which Lyell successfully eliminated from sober geological speculation[79].'
How strongly Lyell had become convinced, as early as 1832, of the truth and importance of the doctrine of Evolution—in the organic as well as in the inorganic world—in spite of his emphatic rejection of the theory of Lamarck, we shall show in the next chapter. It was this conviction, as we shall see, which led to his friendly encouragement of Darwin in his persevering investigations and to his constant solicitude that the results of his friend's labours should not be lost through delay in their publication.