90 CHARLES DARWIN. 



of nearly 30 years' unceasing work and research, was sneered at as 

 *' half-digested facts '"' by men who pattered sermons and scrawled 

 volumes at almost the same rate with which the Times printing- 

 machines provide us with our daily budget of news. 



The heathen raged furiously, and shouted, " He blasphemeth ! " 

 Listen to one sentence of the so-called " blasphemy " ! " It is 

 not more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct 

 species, through the laws of variation and natural selection, than 

 to explain the birth of an individual through the law of ordinary 

 reproduction. The birth of the species and of the individual are 

 equally part of the grand sequence of events which the mind 

 refuses to accept as the result of blind chance. The understanding 

 revolts at such a conclusion." Noble, earnest, wise words such as 

 these were " blasphemy," and they who so miscalled them pre- 

 ferred, I suppose, the conception of creation emanating from the 

 fertile brain of an American Divine, " God Almighty once took 

 some nothing, and in a week produced the universe as it stands, 

 and one man " ! Others said they could " make short work of 

 the absurd theory of modification." Anyone who can make " short 

 work " of Darwin may, as Mr. Grant Allen says in a letter to 

 myself, " be safely neglected." As Mr. W. S. Lilly reminds us in 

 the Fortnightly for January, 1886, such men should remember a 

 precept of the Talmud, " First understand — then argue ; " and 

 that " A fact is not altered by a hundred texts." 



Now Darwin has passed away. His pen is laid aside for ever- 

 more. His mighty genius has gone to be made yet more glorious 

 in another sphere ! Behold the transformation ! He, who hailed 

 with delight a discovery by Wallace, Lyell, or any other observer, 

 and yielded them homage, born of his great, sympathetic, unselfish 

 nature, is exalted to the position of one " who reverenced his con- 

 science as his King," who loved and sought the truth, who wil- 

 lingly disturbed the faith of no man — a great discoverer, a noble 

 philosopher, an English gentleman ; preachers and writers speak 

 true and loyal words in his praise, and Westminster Abbey opens 

 her avenues to receive his remains into her guardian care, followed 

 by a princely retinue of England's greatest divines, scholars, and 

 scientists. 



