April 18, 1817

George Henry Lewes (April 18, 1817 to November 30 1878) was as productive as his partner, though not as brilliantly. He wrote on many topics, -- philosophy, literature, the natural sciences -- all with that boisterous Victorian faith in science. We can also see in his writing, unappreciated as it may be now, a willingness to confront ultimate questions. His answers of course, reflect that belief that just a little more scientific method would solve all the issues left on the table. But who could doubt,  in the mid 19th century, that such a denoument was not just over the horizon. The illusion of perspective is hardly apparent when you are in the blast of great discoveries. That is of course, a function of religion, to give perspective. George Eliot, his partner, had  translated Ludwig Feurbach into English (Feurbach who demanded that man must snatch back the god head for himself), so the answers of traditional religion were not an option in their household. 

I find it hard to fault these bright minds, willing to leap over the fences of convention, who found  it thrilling to share ideas and a bed with each other.  The gasp of the new was genuine, and sharing ideas really a daring path then. 

We see Lewes's concerns in his Problems of Life and Mind  (1875).

Our excerpt below shows Lewes arguing against the idea that creatures present evidence of creation by a deity. He points out  that embryology suggests a deity was not involved in creation. The process of evolution feels its way along,tentatively, trying this and that,  [the import of the evidence of embyology] rather than the way an omnipotent deity would proceed, creating each creature separately and quickly. While we might argue embryology is efficient, Lewes saw it as evidence of abandoned forms which preceded an extant species. What need would an omnipotent god have for efficiency anyway.

....
If any reader of these pages who, from theological or zoological suspicion of the Development Hypothesis, [Darwinism] clings to the hypothesis of a creative Plan which once for all arranged the organic world in Types that could not change, will ask what rational interpretation can be given to the succession of phases each embryo is forced to pass through, it may help to give him pause......

There is not a single known example of a complex organism which is not developed out of simpler forms. ...On the hypothesis of a Plan which pre-arranged the organic world, nothing could be more unworthy of a supreme intelligence than this inability to construct an organism at once, without previously making several tentative efforts, ..." The Great Architect." But if we are to admit the human point of view, a glance at the facts of embryology must produce very uncomfortable reflections. .... Do not let us blink this consideration.

....

Writers have no compunction in speaking of Nature feeling her way and blundering; but if in lieu of Nature, ...., the Great Architect be substituted, it is probable that the repugnance to using such language of evasion may cause men to revise their conceptions altogether; they dare not attribute ignorance and incompetence to the Creator.

[An example Lewes uses of embryonic features uselessly lasting into a later stage are the feline spots visible in a variety of cat species. The spots are evidence of the waste involved in embryonic stages. A deity of course would not leave traces of mistakes] 

Sometimes, as Mr. Darwin remarks, a trace of the embryonic resemblance lasts till a late age: "Thus birds of the same genus, and of closely allied genera, often resemble each other in their first and second plumage: as we see in the spotted feathers in the thrush group. In the cat tribe most of the species are striped and spotted in lines; and strips or spots can plainly be distinguished in the whelp of the lion and the puma. ... Embryos of widely different animals of the same class resemble each other, [and] often have no direct relation to their conditions of existence...."

Lewes's example made sense in the 19th century because no one then had noticed the useful aspect of spots and stipes in letting cats hide in  wild vegetative settings. 

Other of his books:

The Biographical History of Philosophy (1846).

Robespierre (1849)

The life of Goethe (1855)

Studies in Animal Life (1862)

The History of Philosophy from Thales to Comte (1867)

These are just a few titles from a busy written oeuvre.