180 ON THE RECEPTION OF 



existence," and " Natural selection," have become household 

 words and every-day conceptions. The reality and the im- 

 portance of the natural processes on which Darwin founds 

 his deductions are no more doubted than those of growth 

 and multiplication ; and, whether the full potency attributed 

 to them is admitted or not, no one doubts their vast and far- 

 reaching significance. Wherever the biological sciences are 

 studied, the ' Origin of Species ' lights the path of the in- 

 vestigator ; wherever they are taught it permeates the course 

 of instruction. Nor has the influence of Darwinian ideas 

 been less profound, beyond the realms of Biology. The 

 oldest of all philosophies, that of Evolution, was bound hand 

 and foot and cast into utter darkness during the millennium 

 of theological scholasticism. But Darwin poured new life- 

 blood into the ancient frame ; the bonds burst, and the 

 revivified thought of ancient Greece has proved itself to be 

 a more adequate expression of the universal order of things 

 than any of the schemes which have been accepted by the 

 credulity and welcomed by the superstition of seventy later 

 generations of men. 



To any one who studies the signs of the times, the 

 emergence of the philosophy of Evolution, in the attitude of 

 claimant to the throne of the world of thought, from the 

 limbo of hated and, as many hoped, forgotten things, is the 

 most portentous event of the nineteenth century. But the 

 most effective weapons of the modern champions of Evolution 

 were fabricated by Darwin ; and the ' Origin of Species ' has 

 enlisted a formidable body of combatants, trained in the se- 

 vere school of Physical Science, whose ears might have long 

 remained deaf to the speculations of a priori philosophers. 



I do not think that any candid or instructed person will 

 deny the truth of that which has just been asserted. He may 

 hate the very name of Evolution, and may deny its pretensions 

 as vehemently as a Jacobite denied those of George the Second. 

 But there it is not only as solidly seated as the Hanoverian 



