My dear Darwin,—

I see the ‘Saturday Review’ calls my book ‘Lyell’s Trilogy on the Antiquity of Man, Ice, and Darwin.’¹

As to my having the authority you suppose to lead a public who up to this time have regarded me as the advocate of the other side (as in the ‘Principles’) you much overrate my influence.² In the new ‘Year Book of Facts’ for 1863, of Timbs, you will see my portrait, and a sketch of my career, and how I am the champion of anti-transmutation.³ I find myself after reasoning through a whole chapter in favour of man’s coming from the animals, relapsing to my old views whenever I read again a few pages of the ‘Principles,’ or yearn for fossil types of intermediate grade.⁴ Truly I ought to be charitable to Sedgwick and others.⁵ Hundreds who have bought my book in the hope that I should demolish heresy, will be awfully confounded and disappointed. As it is, they will at best say with Crawfurd, who still stands out, ‘You have put the case with such moderation that one cannot complain.’ But when he read Huxley, he was up in arms again.⁶

My feelings, however, more than any thought about policy or expediency, prevent me from dogmatising as to the descent of man from the brutes, which, though I am prepared to accept it, takes away much of the charm from my speculations on the past relating to such matters.

I cannot admit that my leap at p. 505, which makes you ‘groan,’ is more than a legitimate deduction from ‘the thing that is’ applied to ‘the thing that has been,’ as Asa Gray would say, and I have only put it moderately, and as a speculation.⁷

I cannot go Huxley’s length in thinking that natural selection and variation account for so much,⁸ and not so far as you, if I take some passages of your book separately.

I think the old ‘creation’ is almost as much required as ever, but of course it takes a new form if Lamarck’s views improved by yours are adopted.⁹

What I am anxious to effect is to avoid positive inconsistencies in different parts of my book, owing probably to the old trains of thought, the old ruts, interfering with the new course.

But you ought to be satisfied, as I shall bring hundreds towards you, who if I treated the matter more dogmatically would have rebelled.

I have spoken out to the utmost extent of my tether, so far as my reason goes, and farther than my imagination and sentiment can follow, which I suppose has caused occasional incongruities.

Woodward is the best arguer I have met with against natural selection and variation. He puts conchological difficulties against it very forcibly. He is at the same time an out-and-out progressionist.¹⁰

I am glad that both you and Hooker like the ‘ice’ part of the Trilogy.¹¹ You are the first to allude to my remarks on Ramsay, who says ‘I shall come round to his views in good time.’¹²

Falconer, whom I referred to oftener than to any other author, says I have not done justice to the part he took in resuscitating the cave question, and says he shall come out with a separate paper to prove this. I offered to alter anything in the new edition, but this he declined.¹³ Pray write any criticism that occurs to you; you cannot put them too strongly or plainly.

Ever yours sincerely, | Charles Lyell.