LITTLE 

 JOURNEYS 



work, but on the earnest solicitation of Sir Charles 

 Lyell, who gave his personal guarantee to the pub- 

 lisher against loss, quite unknown to Darwin, twelve 

 hundred copies of the book were printed. 

 The edition was sold in one day, and who was sur- 

 prised most, the author or the publisher, it is difficult 

 to say ^ J> 



Up to this time theology had stood solidly on the 

 biblical assertion that mankind had sprung from one 

 man and one woman, and that in the beginning every 

 species was fixed and immutable. Aristotle, three 

 hundred years before Christ, had suggested that by 

 cross-fertilization and change of environment, new 

 species had been, and were being evoked. But the 

 Church had declared Aristotle a heathen, and in every 

 school and college of Christendom it was taught that 

 the world and everything in it was created in six days 

 of twenty-four hours each, and that this occurred four 

 thousand and four years before Christ, on May Tenth. 

 Q Those who doubted or disputed this statement had 

 no standing in society, and in truth until the beginning 

 of the Nineteenth Century, were in actual danger of 

 death — heresy & treason being usually regarded as the 

 same thing. Erasmus Darwin had taught that species 

 were not immutable, but his words were so veiled in 

 the language of poesy that they went unchallenged. 

 But now the grandson of Dr. Erasmus Darwin came 

 forward with the net result of thirty years' continuous 

 work. "The Origin of Species" did not attack any one's 

 religious belief — in fact, in it the biblical account of 

 180 



