From Charles Lyell 2 May 1860
Summary
It is small comfort to be told you will be succeeded in lineal descent by angels when Lamarck and Darwin have made your ancestors without souls. However, can the progressive system not be seen as most consonant with a higher destiny if all spiritual natures advance? The link of common descent to inferior beings like idiots should be obvious. Infants die before they become responsible. Pope’s An essay on Man [1733] shows how man was "In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast", without speculation on his genealogy.
| Author: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 2 May 1860 |
| Classmark: | The University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections (Lyell collection Coll-203/A3/5: 176–9) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2779A |
From Charles Lyell 7 May 1860
Summary
Saw Salter’s Spirifer specimens; a very good proof of indefinite modifiability.
Beginning to think gap between Cambrian and Lower Silurian enormous.
Édouard Lartet to give paper before Geological Society ["On coexistence of man with certain extinct quadrupeds", Q. J. Geol. Soc. Lond. 16 (1859–60): 471–5].
| Author: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 7 May 1860 |
| Classmark: | DAR 205.9: 396 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2787 |
| letter | (2) |
| Darwin, C. R. | (2) |
| Darwin, C. R. | (2) |
| Lyell, Charles | (2) |
