THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' l8l 



dynasty, but happily independent of Parliamentary sanction 

 and the dullest antagonists have come to see that thcv have 

 to deal with an adversary whose bones are to be broken by 

 no amount of bad words. 



Even the theologians have almost ceased to pit the plain 

 meaning of Genesis against the no less plain meaning of 

 Nature. Their more candid, or more cautious, representatives 

 have given up dealing with Evolution as if it were a damnable 

 heresy, and have taken refuge in one of two courses. Either 

 they deny that Genesis was meant to teach scientific truth, 

 and thus save the veracity of the record at the expense of its 

 authority ; or they expend their energies in devising the cruel 

 ingenuities of the reconciler, and torture texts in the vain 

 hope of making them confess the creed of Science. But when 

 the peine forte et dure is over, the antique sincerity of the vener- 

 able sufferer always reasserts itself. Genesis is honest to the 

 core, and professes to be no more than it is, a repository of 

 venerable traditions of unknown origin, claiming no scientific 

 authority and possessing none. 



As my pen finishes these passages, I can but be 

 amused to think what a terrible hubbub would have been 

 made (in truth was made) about any similar expressions of 

 opinion a quarter of a century ago. In fact, the contrast 

 between the present condition of public opinion upon the 

 Darwinian question ; between the estimation in which 

 Darwin's views are now held in the scientific world ; between 

 the acquiescence, or at least quiescence, of the theologians of 

 the self-respecting order at the present day and the out- 

 burst of antagonism on all sides in 1858-9, when the new 

 theory respecting the origin of species first became known to 

 the older generation to which I belong, is so startling that, 

 except for documentary evidence, I should be sometimes 

 inclined to think my memories dreams. I have a great 

 respect for the younger generation myself (they can write our 

 lives, and ravel out all our follies, if they choose to take the 



