The long-standing Lamarck-Darwin thesis of slow and gradual evolutionary change can be reconciled with the Lyell-Linnaeus antithesis of no-change ‘equilibrium’ supported by paleontologists for more than a century. Both theses are deficient to some degree: first, evolution on the generational time scale of natural selection is gradual but not slow, and second, paleontologists working on time scales of thousands of generations cannot see change that is fast. Rates from field studies and fossil studies, combined, form a continuous distribution. Differences leading to competing Lamarck-Darwin and Lyell-Linnaeus perceptions of change are not related to the evolutionary process itself but to what we see and do not see in field studies compared to fossil studies. High step rates are the key because they facilitate rapid change in individual lineages on short time scales, with rapid stabilization of biotas on longer scales of time. Darwin was conservative and wrong to believe that evolution by natural selection is slow, intermittent, and weak. Finding evolution to be fast means the natural selection Darwin proposed is persistent, ubiquitous, and more important than we knew.