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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 January 2010
Robert Chambers, a publisher and amateur geologist, brought out the Vestiges anonymously in 1844, and it was an immediate popular sensation, going through four editions in the first six months, and twenty editions up to 1860. Vestiges was the first full-length presentation of an evolutionary theory of species, in English. Lamarck's theory was known, but chiefly through Charles Lyell's refutation in The Principles of Geology (1830-3). Chambers' desire for anonymity shows that he knew how controversial any such theory would be, and he was fiercely attacked for irreligion and immorality. Here is an example of this reaction to Vestiges from the Rev Adam Sedgwick, one of its most outspoken critics:
If the book be true, the labours of sober induction are in vain; religion is a lie; human law is a mass of folly, and a base injustice; morality is moonshine; our labours for the black people of Africa were works of madmen; and man and woman are only better beasts!
(J. Clark and T. Hughes, Life of Sedgwick (1890), PP. 83–4)Chambers' inclusion of man in his evolutionary scheme was seen as an especial affront, substituting descent from animal origins for direct creation by God.
But it is also important to realise that Adam Sedgwick was Professor of Geology at Cambridge, an eminent and respected scientist working in the tradition of natural theology.
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