In the course of the letter Dr. Carpenter says--page 461:--
"Under the influence of his foregone conclusion that I have accepted Mr. Darwin as my master, and his hypothesis as my guide, your reviewer represents me as blind to the significance of the general fact stated by me, that 'there has been no advance in the foraminiferous type from the palaeozoic period to the present time.' But for such a foregone conclusion he would have recognised in this statement the expression of my conviction that the present state of scientific evidence, instead of sanctioning the idea that the descendants of the primitive type or types of Foraminifera can ever rise to any higher grade, justifies the ANTI-DARWINIAN influence, that however widely they diverge from each other and from their originals, THEY STILL REMAIN FORAMINIFERA.")...It will be some time before we see "slime, protoplasm, etc.," generating a new animal. (On the same subject my father wrote in 1871: "It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are now present, which could ever have been present. But if (and oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc., present, that a proteine compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed.") But I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion, and used the Pentateuchal term of creation (This refers to a passage in which the reviewer of Dr. Carpenter's books speaks of "an operation of force," or "a concurrence of forces which have now no place in nature," as being, "a creative force, in fact, which Darwin could only express in Pentateuchal terms as the primordial form 'into which life was first breathed.'" The conception of expressing a creative force as a primordial form is the Reviewer's.), by which I really meant "appeared" by some wholly unknown process. It is mere rubbish, thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter.
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, Friday night [April 17, 1863].
My dear Hooker,
I have heard from Oliver that you will be now at Kew, and so I am going to amuse myself by scribbling a bit. I hope you have thoroughly enjoyed your tour. I never in my life saw anything like the spring flowers this year. What a lot of interesting things have been lately published. I liked extremely your review of De Candolle. What an awfully severe article that by Falconer on Lyell ("Athenaeum", April 4, 1863, page 459. The writer asserts that justice has not been done either to himself or Mr. Prestwich-- that Lyell has not made it clear that it was their original work which supplied certain material for the 'Antiquity of Man.' Falconer attempts to draw an unjust distinction between a "philosopher" (here used as a polite word for compiler) like Sir Charles Lyell, and original observers, presumably such as himself, and Mr. Prestwich. Lyell's reply was published in the "Athenaeum", April 18, 1863. It ought to be mentioned that a letter from Mr. Prestwich ("Athenaeum", page 555), which formed part of the controversy, though of the nature of a reclamation, was written in a very different spirit and tone from Dr. Falconer's.); I am very sorry for it; I think Falconer on his side does not do justice to old Perthes and Schmerling...I shall be very curious to see how he [Lyell] answers it to- morrow. (I have been compelled to take in the "Athenaeum" for a while.) I am very sorry that Falconer should have written so spitefully, even if there is some truth in his accusations; I was rather disappointed in Carpenter's letter, no one could have given a better answer, but the chief object of his letter seems to me to be to show that though he has touched pitch he is not defiled. No one would suppose he went so far as to believe all birds came from one progenitor.