BIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS 15 



two thousand years ago, and later by Lamark, a great 

 French Naturalist* But to Charles Darwin belongs the 

 honour of having, not only defined the meaning of 

 Evolution, but of having shown how it works, and of 

 having brought forward such a mass of convincing 

 evidence in its support that no one now doubts its truth* 



His aim was two-fold* To show : 



(i) That Evolution is the method of Creation* 



(2) That '* natural selection ** is the method of Evolution* 



I, myself, did not come into existence until shortly 

 after the publication of Charles Darwin^s great work, 

 but I am quite old enough to remember the tremendous 

 flutter in the theological dove-cotes which followed its 

 publication, for when I was a boy the battle was still 

 raging furiously* The Genesis story of Creation had 

 been denied, and the foundations of religion seemed to 

 be shaken* Bishops, Archbishops and Nonconformist 

 divines rushed into the fray, and talked with authority 

 upon subjects of which they knew nothing, showering 

 foul abuse upon Darwin in a manner more worthy of 

 Billingsgate than of dignitaries of the Church* Darwin 

 himself maintained throughout a dignified silence ; but 

 his more belligerent henchman, Thomas Huxley, took 

 up the cudgels for his master* He was a splendid 

 fighter* He struck out right and left, and the dignitaries 

 of the Church went down like ninepins before his sledge- 

 hammer blows* Quakerism, however, remained un- 

 moved, being concerned, not with the creeds and dogmas 

 of the Churches, which might or might not be true, but 

 with the Truth itself* The early Friends called them- 

 selves Friends of Truth* From the very first they had 

 set aside the doctrines of Verbal Inspiration, and 

 Original Sin, both of which had been rendered utterly 



2 



