The earlier part of this criticism appears perfectly just and
appropriate; but, from the concluding paragraph, Whewell
evidently imagines that by "creation" Lyell means a preternatural
intervention of the Deity; whereas the letter to Herschel shows
that, in his own mind, Lyell meant natural causation; and I see
no reason to doubt (The following passages in Lyell's letters
appear to me decisive on this point:--

To Darwin, October 3, 1859 (ii, 325), on first reading the
'Origin.'

"I have long seen most clearly that if any concession is made,
all that you claim in your concluding pages will follow.

"It is this which has made me so long hesitate, always feeling
that the case of Man and his Races, and of other animals, and
that of plants, is one and the same, and that if a vera causa be
admitted for one instant, [instead] of a purely unknown and
imaginary one, such as the word 'creation,' all the consequences
must follow."

To Darwin, March 15, 1863 (volume ii. page 365).

"I remember that it was the conclusion he [Lamarck] came to about
man that fortified me thirty years ago against the great
impression which his arguments at first made on my mind, all the
greater because Constant Prevost, a pupil of Cuvier's forty years
ago, told me his conviction 'that Cuvier thought species not
real, but that science could not advance without assuming that
they were so.'"