The Lamarck-Darwin thesis of slow and gradual, step-by-step evolutionary change and the Lyell-Linnaeus antithesis of more rapid change and no-change both share a dominant central stasis mode representing negligible change through time. Thesis and antithesis differ in the distribution of rates about the central stasis mode. Slow step-by-step evolutionary change, positive and negative, leads to a single central distribution of rates. More rapid changes imperceptible on timescales generally studied by paleontologists create what appear as distinct secondary modes, positive and negative, separated from the central stasis mode. The Lamarck-Darwin thesis of step-by-step evolutionary change, and the Lyell-Linnaeus antithesis of ‘change’ and ‘no change’ (or simply ‘no change’) are unified when rates are studied on all scales of time. Lamarck and Darwin were right about the gradual nature of evolutionary change. Darwin was wrong in claiming evolution to be slow. Rates are slow when averaged down over thousands and millions of generations, but step rates averaging 0.15 standard deviations per generation that animate evolutionary by natural selection are fast by any measure.