" The Origin of Species " 497 



The acts of religion which may result from such convictions, i.e. 

 devotion in all its forms, praj^er, praise, sacraments, are left un- 

 mentioned. It is clear that they are not, as now to us, sociological 

 survivals of great interest and importance, but rather matters too 

 private, too personal, for discussion. 



Huxley, writing in the Contemporary Review^, says, " In a dozen 

 years The Origin of Species has worked as complete a revolution in 

 biological science as the Principia did in astronomy." It has done 

 so because, in the words of Helmholtz, it contained "an essentially 

 new creative thought," that of the continuity of life, the absence of 

 breaks. In the two most conservative subjects, Religion and Classics, 

 this creative ferment was slow indeed to work. Darwin himself 

 felt strongly "that a man should not publish on a subject to which 

 he has not given special and continuous thought," and hence wrote 

 little on religion and with manifest reluctance, though, as already 

 seen, in answer to pertinacious inquiry he gave an outline of his o^vn 

 views. But none the less he foresaw that his doctrine must have, for 

 the history of man's mental evolution, issues wider than those with 

 which he was prepared personally to deal. He writes, in The Origin 

 of Species^, "In the future I see open fields for far more important 

 researches. Psychology will be securely based on the foundation 

 already well laid by Mr Herbert Spencer, that of the necessary 

 acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation." 



Nowhere, it is true, does Darwin definitely say that he regarded 

 religion as a set of phenomena, the development of which may be 

 studied from the psychological standpoint. Rather we infer from his 

 piety — in the beautiful Roman sense — towards tradition and associa- 

 tion, that religion was to him in some way sacrosanct. But it is 

 delightful to see how his heart went out towards the new method 

 in religious study which he had himself, if half-unconsciously, in- 

 augurated- Writing in 1871 to Dr Tylor, on the publication of his 

 Primitive Ctdture, he says^ "It is wonderful how you trace animism 

 from the lower races up the religious belief of the highest races. It 

 will make me for the future look at religion — a belief in the soul, 

 etc. — from a new point of view." 



Psychology was henceforth to be based on "the necessary acquire- 

 ment of each mental capacity by gradation." With these memorable 

 words the door closes on the old and opens on the new horizon. 

 The mental focus henceforth is not on the maintaining or refuting of 

 an orthodoxy but on the genesis and evolution of a capacity, not on 

 perfection but on process. Continuous evolution leaves no gap for 

 revelation sudden and complete. We have henceforth to ask, not 



1 1871. 8 6th edition, p. 428. » Life and Letters, Vol. iii. p. 151. 



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