T.H. Huxley on the Origin of Species

From, 'The Westminster Review', April 1860. as found at Project Gutenburg.

From the prophetic concluding paragraph of T.H Huxley's article on The Origin of Species:

We should leave a very wrong impression on the reader's mind if we
permitted him to suppose that the value of that work depends wholly on
the ultimate justification of the theoretical views which it contains.
On the contrary, if they were disproved to-morrow, the book would still
be the best of its kind--the most compendious statement of well-sifted
facts bearing on the doctrine of species that has  ever appeared.  The
chapters on Variation, on the Struggle for Existence, on Instinct, on
Hybridism, on the Imperfection of the Geological Record, on Geographical
Distribution, have not only no equals, but, so far as our knowledge goes,
no competitors, within the range of biological literature.  And viewed as 
a whole, we do not believe that, since the publication of Von Baer's
Researches on Development, thirty years ago, any work has appeared 
calculated to exert so large an influence, not only on the future of Biology, 
but in extending the domination of Science over regions of thought into which
she has, as yet, hardly penetrated.