Evolution--and his advocacy was not calculated to advance the
cause. Outside these ranks, the only person known to me whose
knowledge and capacity compelled respect, and who was, at the
same time, a thorough-going evolutionist, was Mr. Herbert
Spencer, whose acquaintance I made, I think, in 1852, and then
entered into the bonds of a friendship which, I am happy to
think, has known no interruption. Many and prolonged were the
battles we fought on this topic. But even my friend's rare
dialectic skill and copiousness of apt illustration could not
drive me from my agnostic position. I took my stand upon two
grounds: firstly, that up to that time, the evidence in favour
of transmutation was wholly insufficient; and secondly, that no
suggestion respecting the causes of the transmutation assumed,
which had been made, was in any way adequate to explain the
phenomena. Looking back at the state of knowledge at that time,
I really do not see that any other conclusion was justifiable.

In those days I had never even heard of Treviranus' 'Biologie.'
However, I had studied Lamarck attentively and I had read the
'Vestiges' with due care; but neither of them afforded me any
good ground for changing my negative and critical attitude. As
for the 'Vestiges,' I confess that the book simply irritated me
by the prodigious ignorance and thoroughly unscientific habit of
mind manifested by the writer. If it had any influence on me at
all, it set me against Evolution; and the only review I ever have
qualms of conscience about, on the ground of needless savagery,
is one I wrote on the 'Vestiges' while under that influence.

With respect to the 'Philosophie Zoologique,' it is no reproach
to Lamarck to say that the discussion of the Species question in