s..] MR. DARWWS CRITICS. 241 



personal God, who, on Mr. Mivart s hypothesis, must 

 liave used language studiously calculated to deceive 

 His creatures and worshippers, is &quot;no religion worthy 

 of the name.&quot; &quot;Incredibile est, Deum illis verbis ad 

 populum fuisse locutum quibus deciperetur,&quot; is a verdict 

 in which, for once, Jesuit casuistry concurs with the 

 healthy moral sense of all mankind. 



Having happily got quit of the theological aspect of 

 evolution, the supporter of that great truth who turns to 

 the scientific objections which are brought against it by 

 recent criticism, finds, to his relief, that the work before 

 him is greatly lightened by the spontaneous retreat of 

 the enemy from nine-tenths of the territory which he 

 occupied ten years ago. Even the Quarterly Reviewer 

 not only abstains from venturing to deny that evolution 

 has taken place, but he openly admits that Mr. Darwin 

 has forced on men s minds &quot; a recognition of the proba 

 bility, if not more, of evolution, and of the certainty of 

 the action of natural selection&quot; (p. 49). 



I do not quite see, myself, how, if the action of natural 

 selection is certain, the occurrence of evolution is only 

 probable ; inasmuch as the development of a new species 

 by natural selection is, so far as it goes, evolution. How 

 ever, it is not worth while to quarrel with the precise 

 terms of a sentence which shows that the high watermark 

 of intelligence among those most respectable of Britons, 

 the readers of the Quarterly Revieiv, has now reached 

 such a level that the next tide may lift them easily and 

 pleasantly on the once-dreaded shore of evolution. Nor, 

 having got there, do they seem likely to stop, until they 

 have reached the inmost heart of that great region, and 

 accepted the ape ancestry of, at any rate, the body of 

 man. For the Eeviewer admits that Mr. Darwin can 

 be said to have established : 



