148 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In France the attack was even more violent. Fabre d'Envieu 

 brought out the heavy artillery of theology, and in a long series 

 of elaborate propositions demonstrated that any other doctrine 

 than that of the fixity and persistence of species is absolutely con- 

 trary to Scripture. The Abb(5 Desorges, a former Professor of 

 Theology, stigmatized Darwin as a " pedant," and evolution as 

 " gloomy " ; Monseigneur S(?gur, referring to Darwin and his fol- 

 lowers, declared : " These infamous doctrines have for their only 

 support the most abject passions. Their father is pride, their 

 mother impurity, their offspring revolutions. They come from 

 hell and return thither, taking with them the gross creatures who 

 blush not to proclaim and accept them." 



In Germany the attack, if less declamatory, was no less severe. 

 Catholic theologians vied with Protestants in bitterness. Prof. 

 Michelis declared Darwin's theory "a caricature of creation." 

 Dr. Hagermann asserted that it " turned the Creator out of doors." 

 Dr. Schund insisted that " every idea of the Holy Scriptures, from 

 the first to the last page, stands in diametrical opposition to the 

 Darwinian theory"; and, "if Darwin be right in his view of the 

 development of man out of a brutal condition, then the Bible 

 teaching in regard to man is utterly annihilated." Rougemont 

 at Stuttgart called for a crusade against the obnoxious doctrine. 

 Luthardt, Professor of Theology at Leipsic, declared : " The idea of 

 creation belongs to religion and not to natural science ; the whole 

 superstructure of personal religion is built upon the doctrine of 

 creation " ; and he showed that the evolution theory is in direct 

 contradiction to Holy Writ. 



But in 1863 came an event which brought serious confusion to 

 the theological camp : Sir Charles Lyell, the most eminent of liv- 

 ing geologists, a man of deeply Christian feeling and of exceed- 

 ingly cautious and conservative temper, who had opposed the 

 evolution theory of Lamarck and declared his adherence to the 

 idea of successive creations, then published his work on the An- 

 tiquity of Man, and in this and other utterances showed himself 

 a complete though unwilling convert to the fundamental ideas of 

 Darwin. The blow was serious in many ways, and especially so 

 in two first, as withdrawing all foundation in fact from the 

 scriptural chronology, and secondly, as discrediting the creation 

 theory. The blow was not indeed unexpected ; in various review 

 articles against the Darwinian theory there had been appeals to 

 Lyell, at times almost piteous, " not to flinch from the truths he 

 had formerly proclaimed." 



1869. For Bayma, see the Catholic World, xxvi, 782. For the Acaderaia, see Essays edit- 

 ed by Cardinal Manning, above cited ; and for the Victoria Institute, see Scientia Scienti- 

 arum, by a member of the Victoria Institute, London, 1865. 



