‘How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!’
Thomas Huxley, naturalist

‘He has opened a path of inquiry full of promise, the results of which none can foresee.’
John Stuart Mill, philosopher

‘One of the most interesting parts of Mr Darwin’s volume is that in which he establishes this law of natural selection we say establishes, because – repeating, that we differ from him totally in the limits which he would assign to its action – we have no doubt of the existence or of the importance of the law itself.’
Bishop Samuel Wilberforce

‘It is remarkable how Darwin rediscovers, among the beasts and the plants, the society of England with its division of labour, competition, opening of new markets, “inventions” and Malthusian “struggle for existence”.’
Karl Marx, political theorist

‘The most important original observations, recorded in the volume of 1859 are, in our estimation, its real gems – few indeed and far apart, and leaving the determination of the origin of species very nearly where the author found it.’
Sir Richard Owen, naturalist

‘What can we believe but that Darwin’s theory is an ingenious and plausible speculation, to which future physiologists will look back with the kind of admiration we bestow on the atoms of Lucretius, or the crystal spheres of Eudoxus, containing like these some faint half-truths, marking at once the ignorance of the age and the ability of the philosopher.’
Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin, engineer

‘I have read your book with more pain than pleasure. Parts of it I admired greatly; parts I laughed at till my sides were almost sore; other parts I read with absolute sorrow, because I think them utterly false and grievously mischievous.’
Adam Sedgwick, geologist

‘We had a capital meeting at Norwich, and dear old Hooker came out in great force as he always does in emergencies. The only fault was the terrible Darwinismus, which spread over the section and crept out when you least expected it, even in Fergusson’s lecture on “Buddhist temples”. You will have the rare happiness to see your ideas triumphant during your lifetime.’
Thomas Huxley, naturalist

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