CHAPTER FIVE MODIFIED MUD OR MODIFIED MONKEY: UNIFORMITY, PROGRESSION AND TRANSMUTATION

There is more than a quarter of a century between the publication of Lyell's Principles and Darwin's Origin of Species, a period during which Lyell continued travelling, geologizing, and revising Principles, which went through nine editions during these decades. Lyell soon realized that much of the descriptive of his original third volume had better be presented in a separate book, which was needed as a more traditional kind of 'textbook'.1 It was published in one volume by Murray as Elements of Geology in 183 8, which likewise was regularly revised in the six editions through which it ran in the 27 years following publication. Lyell's revising of Principles and Elements turned out to be an affair that kept him busy for the rest of his life. Historians of science initially stressed the similarities between Lyell's and Darwin's thinking, and then, seeing where Lyell's biological system tended, marvelled that he did not reach the conclusions Darwin reached. Thus writes: "One can scarcely resist the observation that The Origin could almost literally have been written out of Lyell' s book."2 The fact was tentatively explained by Lyell's emphasis on , which was probably too rigidly applied by Lyell to counteract the directionalists. Early historians were further puzzled when Lyell remained reluctant to accept even when it was made public in 1859, especially as his letters to Darwin reveal an emotional rather than scientific reluctance. Most later critics of the 1970s, following Hooykaas's important study of uniformity, tend to play the importance of Lyell's emotional thinking down by stressing his philosophical reasons in maintaining strict uniformity against evolution. This view is illustrated by W. Faye Cannon in a paper read at the Centenary Symposium in 1975. He writes that studies of Lyell's psychology are valid as studies of Lyell' s religious position in Victorian society but relatively immaterial in interpreting his scientific stand against progression and transmutation: "Lyell must have had professional reasons for believing that his defense was good science; and his opponents must have thought so too,

1 Gould maintains that Lyell defeated his strategy in moving the third volume of Principles to a different work and that Lyell's reworking his material for further editions similarly weakened the argument: "[Lyell] shifted and tinkered [in later editions of Principles] with so many chapters that the original coherence of argument dissipated," (Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle, pp. 143,146,149,150). 2 Darwin's Century, p. 100. 62 CHAPTER FIVE or they would not have bothered to argue at length with him."3 This view seems to have gathered ground. Michael Bartholomew, however, makes a case for LyelPs emotional response and argues that "the implications of progression could not be squared with his deepest beliefs about man and God."4 He admits that although the information we have about Lyell's personal life is meagre, it still allows us to recognize a line of deistic thinking from his earliest publications onward. Lyell clearly saw his work as part of the tradition of , and as such confirming the perfect unity of design of the Creator. This, I have tried to argue in the preceding chapters, is the underlying proposition in Lyell's scientific philosophy. Bartholomew attributes great significance to LyelPs reaction in 1866 when W.B. Carpenter in a lecture on the antiquity of man accused the clergy of deliberate resistance to scientific theories. Lyell wrote to Huxley and Carpenter that he resented such a needless assault on the sentiments of the public, and he threatened to withdraw his contribution to the lectures. Indeed, this reaction is in line with my interpretation of Lyell's outburst against Toulmin forty years before. Without necessitating a rejection of explanations which see Lyell's conservatism with regard to the acceptance of evolution as a logical outcome of Lyell's uniformitarian stand, Bartholomew's view seems sound. It is my purpose in the following to show that Lyell' s reactions to evolution in the years between Principles and The Origin are also emotionally charged. I will reserve a discussion of Lyell's more strictly religious beliefs for a separate chapter.

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The quarter of a century between Lyell's Principles and Darwin's Origin is the period of a slowly but steadily growing theory of evolution, which in the first place became possible because of Lyell's interpretation of geological time. The first two decades, however, are mainly untroubled years for Lyell's view of species; it is in the years immediately preceding and following 1859 that his views are obfuscated and full of misgiving. In the early thirties Darwin was still busily collecting material around the world as a naturalist on board the Beagle, very much after the fashion of the famous traveller-naturalist , and rumours reached England, through Henslow, about the immense wealth of material he was to bring back. Lyell and other naturalists impatiently awaited his return,5 which eventually took place in October 1836. A friendship which watered down after

1 "Charles Lyell, Radical Actualism, and Theory," p. 105. 4 "Lyell and Evolution," p.265. 5 "How 1 long for a return of Darwin!" (Letter to Sedgwick, December 6,1835, LLL i.460-1 ).