NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 13 



"by Moses Stuart. Neither of the great Englisli universities, as a 

 rule, took any notice of the innovators save by sneers. 



To this current of thought there was joined a new element, 

 when, in 1844, Robert Chambers published his Vestiges of Crea- 

 tion. The book was attractive and was widely read ; in Cham- 

 bers^s view the several series of animated beings, from the sim- 

 plest and oldest up to the highest and most recent, were the result 

 of two distinct impulses, each given once and for all time by the 

 Creator. The first of these was an impulse imparted to forms of 

 life lifting them gradually through higher grades; the second 

 was an impulse tending to modify organic substances in accord- 

 ance with external circumstances; in fact, the doctrine of the 

 book was evolution tempered by miracle, a stretching out of the 

 creative act through all time a pious version of Lamarck. 



Two results followed one mirth-provoking, the other leading 

 to serious thought. As to the former, the theologians were greatly 

 alarmed by the book ; it was loudly insisted that it promoted 

 atheism. Looking back along the line of thought which has 

 since been developed, one feels that the Church ought to have put 

 up public thanksgivings for Chambers's theory and public prayers 

 that it might prove true. As to the serious result, it accustomed 

 men's minds to a belief in evolution as in some form possibly or 

 even probably true. In this way it was provisionally of service. 



Eight years later Herbert Spencer published an essay con- 

 trasting the theories of creation and evolution, reasoning with 

 great force in favor of the latter, showing that species had un- 

 doubtedly been modified by circumstances; but still only few 

 and chosen men saw the significance of all these lines of reason- 

 ing which had been converging during so many years toward one 

 conclusion. 



On July 1, 1858, there were read before the Linn^ean Society at 

 London two papers one presented by Charles Darwin, the other 

 by Alfred Russel Wallace and with the reading of these papers 

 the doctrine of evolution by natural selection was born. Then 

 and there a fatal breach was made in the great theological barrier 

 of the continued fixity of species since the creation. 



The story of these papers the scientific world knows by heart : 

 how Charles Darwin, having been sent to the University of Cam- 

 bridge to fit him for the Anglican priesthood, left it in 1831 to go 

 upon the scientific expedition of the " Beagle " ; how for five years 

 he studied with wonderful vigor and acuteness the problems of 

 life as revealed on land and at sea among volcanoes and coral 

 reefs, in forests and on the sands, from the tropics to the arctic 

 regions ; how, in the Cape de Verde and the Galapagos Islands, 

 and in Brazil, Patagonia, and Australia he interrogated Nature 

 with matchless persistency and skill ; how he returned un- 



