THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



it is the duty of the public to discourage anything 

 of this kind [the opposition to science], to dis- 

 credit these foolish meddlers who think they do the 

 Almighty a service by preventing a thorough study 

 of His works."*' I would not accuse Huxley of inten- 

 tional intellectual dishonesty but the evidence of his 

 own arguments shows that he, too, was swayed by 

 human prejudice. For example, in 1862, when under 

 the sobering influence of addressing the Royal Geo- 

 logical Society and not on the lecture platform, his 

 thesis was to prove that the temporal history of the 

 earth cannot be determined by geological records and 

 that: "In view of t«he immense diversity of known 

 animal and vegetable forms, and the enormous lapse 

 of time indicated by the accumulation of fossiliferous 

 strata, the only circumstance to be wondered at is, 

 not that the changes of life, as exhibited by positive 

 evidence, have been so great, but that they have been 

 so small. "^ In the following year during a course of 

 popular lectures to working men he enlarged on the 

 thesis that palaeontology is a proof not only of evolu- 

 tion but also "shows us many facts which are perfect- 

 ly harmonious with these observed effects of the pro- 

 cess by which Mr. Darwin supposes species to have 

 originated, but which appear to me to be totally in- 

 consistent with any other hypothesis which has been 



6 Darwin, Life and Letters, vol. II, p. 76. 



■^ Huxley, Collected Essays, vol. VIII, "Discourses Biological and 

 Geological," p. 297. See also vol. II, p. 239, where he affirms: "Pri- 

 mary and direct evidence in favour of evolution can be furnished 

 only by palaeontology." 



I 20] 



