The characteristic with which anyone who spent some time in Charles Lyell's company was most impressed, was his thirst for knowledge, combined with a singular openness, and perfect fairness of mind. He was absolutely free from all petty pride, and from "that common failing of men of science, which causes them to cling with such tenacity to opinions once formed, even in the face of the strongest evidence."[160] Ramsay wrote of him,[161] "We all like Lyell much; he is anxious for instruction, and so far from affecting the bigwig, he is not afraid to learn anything from anyone.[162] The notes he takes are amazing." No man could have given a stronger proof of candour and plasticity of mind and of his care for truth alone than Lyell did in dealing with the question of the origin of species. From the first he approached it without prejudice. So long as the facts adduced by Lamarck and others appeared to him insufficient to support their hypotheses, he gave the preference to some modification of the ordinarily accepted view--that a species began in a creative act--but after reading Darwin's classic work,[163] and discussing the subject in private, not only with its author, but also with Sir J. Hooker and Professor Huxley, he was convinced that Darwin was right in his main contention, though he held back in regard to certain minor points, for which he thought the evidence as yet insufficient. Of his conduct in this matter, Darwin justly wrote: "Considering his age, his former views, and position in society, I think his action has been heroic."[164] Dean Stanley, in the pulpit of Westminster Abbey, on the Sunday following the funeral, summed up in a few eloquent sentences the great moral lesson of Lyell's life. "From early youth to extreme old age it was to him a solemn religious duty to be incessantly learning, fearlessly correcting his own mistakes, always ready to receive and reproduce from others that which he had not in himself. Science and religion for him not only were not divorced, but were one and indivisible."[165]