incarnations of successive thoughts of the Deity; and that he had wiped
out one set of these embodiments by an appalling geological catastrophe
as soon as His ideas took a more advanced shape, I found myself not only
unable to admit the accuracy of the deductions from the facts of
paleontology, upon which this astounding hypothesis was founded, but I
had to confess my want of any means of testing the correctness of his
explanation of them. And besides that, I could by no means see what the
explanation explained. Neither did it help me to be told by an eminent
anatomist that species had succeeded one another in time, in virtue of
"a continuously operative creational law." That seemed to me to be no
more than saying that species had succeeded one another in the form of a
vote-catching resolution, with "law" to catch the man of science, and
"creational" to draw the orthodox. So I took refuge in that "thatige
Skepsis" which Goethe has so well defined; and, reversing the apostolic
precept to be all things to all men, I usually defended the tenability
of the received doctrines when I had to do with the transmutationist;
and stood up for the possibility of transmutation among the
orthodox--thereby, no doubt, increasing an already current, but quite
undeserved, reputation for needless combativeness.

I remember, in the course of my first interview with Mr. Darwin,
expressing my belief in the sharpness of the lines of demarcation
between natural groups and in the absence of transitional forms, with
all the confidence of youth and imperfect knowledge. I was not aware, at
that time, that he had then been many years brooding over the
species-question; and the humorous smile which accompanied his gentle
answer, that such was not altogether his view, long haunted and puzzled
me. But it would seem that four or five years' hard work had enabled me
to understand what it meant; for Lyell, writing to Sir Charles Bunbury
(under date of April 30, 1856), says:--