iX THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and will therefore destroy some of the old formulae which involved dif- 

 ferent perceptions. To those who have succeeded in persuading them- 

 selves that any set of Articles constructed some centuries ago were to 

 be final and indestructible expressions of truth, the prospect may cer- 

 tainly be distressing. There may, indeed, be no positive logical irrecon- 

 cilability between orthodoxy and Darwinism. A little more straining 

 of a few phrases which have proved themselves to be sufficiently elas- 

 tic, and the first obvious difficulty may be removed. The first chapter 

 of Genesis has survived Sir Charles Lyell ; it may be stretched suffi- 

 ciently to include Mr. Darwin. But in questions of this kind there is 

 a kind of logical instinct which outruns the immediate application of 

 the new theories. The mere change of perspective does much. When 

 the sun was finally placed in the centre of the heavens instead of the 

 earth, the few texts which apparently opposed were easily adapted to 

 the new theories. But there was a further change of infinitely greater 

 importance, which, though not so easily embodied in direct logical 

 issues, profoundly modified all theological conceptions. When people 

 began to realize the fact that we live in a wretched little atom of a 

 planet dancing about the sun, instead of being the whole universe, with 

 a few stars to save candle-light, the ancient orthodoxy was shaken to 

 its base. It is impossible to read the controversies which marked the 

 great intellectual revolt of the last century without seeing how much 

 men's minds were influenced by the simple consideration that Chris- 

 tians were a small numerical minority of the human race, and the habi- 

 tation of the race a mere grain of dust in the universe. The facts were 

 more or less known before, and were not capable of furnishing syllo- 

 gisms absolutely incompatible with any orthodox dogma. And yet 

 the mere change in the point of view, working rather upon the imagi- 

 nation than the reason, gradually made the old positions untenable. 

 A similar change is being brought about by the application of that 

 method of which Darwinism is at present the most conspicuous ex- 

 ample. Possibly the change may be of even greater importance. 

 Certainly it is of far too great importance to be more than dimly in- 

 dicated here. Briefly it may be described as the substitution of a be- 

 lief in gradual evolution for a belief in spasmodic action and occasional 

 outbursts of creative energy ; of the acceptance of the corollary that 

 we must seek for the explanation of facts or ideas by tracing their his- 

 tory instead of accounting for them by some short a priori method ; 

 and thus of the adoption of the historical method in all manner of in- 

 vestigations into social, and political, and religious problems which 

 were formerly solved by a much more summary, if not more satisfac- 

 tory method. 



It is curious to remark how the influence of new methods penetrates 

 the minds of those who would most strenuously repudiate some of the 

 results to which they lead. We may illustrate the point by an analogy 

 drawn from the theory of which we have been speaking. Mr. Wal- 



