THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



physical part of nature as well as a physical. A man 

 who denies this is deep in the mire of folly."* And 

 Samuel Butler, who was himself an evolutionist, de- 

 clared with penetrating accuracy that Darwin had 

 banished mind from the universe, since the theory of 

 natural selection would envelop us in the unbreath- 

 able atmosphere of fatalism which is the charac- 

 teristic blight of Darwinism. ^^ This, too, was the 

 gravamen of the argument, not always judiciously 

 expressed, of the clergy. They were right; step by 

 step with the advance of biological evolution as a 

 scientific hypothesis there grew up the monistic phil- 

 osophy of naturalism which endeavored to express 

 the whole universe, organic and inorganic, in the 

 single formula of evolution. 



Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, 

 after the first attacks made on it by a shocked clergy, 

 was passionately preached by men of the most differ- 

 ent points of view. The captains of industry attached 

 its flag to their masts because they found natural se- 

 lection gave them the right to exploit the less en- 

 dowed of their fellow men; the humanitarians and 

 social workers used it as a shibboleth for the equality 

 and brotherhood of men; the irreligious pointed to it 

 as a proof that no god ruled the world; the clergy 

 preached it from the pulpit as not inconsistent with 

 the teachings and life of Jesus; the pacifists claimed 



4 Life and Letters of Darzoin, vol. II, p. 44. 

 s Evolution, Old and New. 



