154 Darwin and his Teachings. | April, 
his disciples, or than any obstacles that literary conservatism or 
sectarian intolerance may have thrown across its path. 
And this is, indeed, much to be regretted on many grounds, not 
the least important being, that at the time when his views on the 
“Origin of Species” were first promulgated, the state of the public 
mind rendered great caution advisable in the publication of physical 
theories apparently opposed to religious tradition. The pruning- 
knife had been very ruthlessly applied to the tree of knowledge 
during the few years previous to the appearance of Darwin's book, 
and we know how at least one noble mind sank under the pres- 
sure of dogmas at variance with his previous theological beliefs. 
True, the large majority of thinking men, first savans, next laymen, 
and finally clergymen, had become reconciled to the new light which 
shone upon a world, now admitted to have been in existence ages of 
ages instead of a few thousand years, and the period of man’s 
advent had also been removed to an earlier date than that assigned 
to it by tradition; but there were millions whose minds were still 
encrusted with the old doctrine, and thousands ready to seize upon 
any indiscretion on the part of natural philosophers, and to strangle 
the new-born infant of Science at its birth. But whilst all those 
facts which led to the revolution in men’s minds concerning the six 
days’ creation were clearly engraved upon the works of nature, and 
carried conviction to all who chose to observe and reflect, there is 
undeniably mixed up with the new law, or we should say, the 
recently revived doctrine of the transition of species a sufficiently 
large amount of speculation to preclude its acceptance otherwise 
than as a well-founded hypothesis. Many able men who have re- 
linquished the biblical version of the creation, still, consciously or 
unconsciously, take their biological and zoological doctrines from 
the sacred writings, and some of these contend that the words 
“after his kind,” and “after their kind,” which so frequently occur 
in the first chapter of Genesis, mean the special creation, by a 
supernatural or miraculous intervention of the Almighty, of each 
new species, and of course to such reasoners there is-no difficulty in 
accounting for the origin of man in conformity with the traditional 
account of his creation. Others, again, who are opposed to Darwin's 
views, do not base their opposition upon Scripture alone, but they 
say, and truly, that no new species has ever been known to come 
into existence either by natural or by artificial selection within the 
historic period, notwithstanding that experimentalists have, with 
one purpose or another, succeeded in breeding or producing innu- 
merable widely divergent varieties of existing § species. 
But although the twofold nature of the argument against Dar- 
win’s views has told heavily against their acceptance, we believe 
reflecting men will soon find that the opposition on theological 
grounds cannot hold its place, and that it resembles in its character 
