"
THE PRESENT CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE.
When it was my duty to consider what subject I would select for the six
lectures [*To Working Men, at the Museum of Practical Geology, 1863.]
which I shall now have the pleasure of delivering to you, it occurred
to me that I could not do better than endeavour to put before you in a
true light, or in what I might perhaps with more modesty call, that
which I conceive myself to be the true light, the position of a book
which has been more praised and more abused, perhaps, than any book
which has appeared for some years;--I mean Mr. Darwin's work on the
"Origin of Species". That work, I doubt not, many of you have read;
for I know the inquiring spirit which is rife among you. At any rate,
all of you will have heard of it,--some by one kind of report and some
by another kind of report; the attention of all and the curiosity of
all have been probably more or less excited on the subject of that
work. All I can do, and all I shall attempt to do, is to put before
you that kind of judgment which has been formed by a man, who, of
course, is liable to judge erroneously; but, at any rate, of one whose
business and profession it is to form judgments upon questions of this
nature.
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