Evolutionism and Darwinism. 49 



we should find similar thoughts elsewhere. &quot;We 

 need not, however, stop to conjecture what the 

 ancient world believed ; for its civilization was 

 submerged, in the early Christian centuries, by 

 inundations of Goths, Yandals, Huns, and simi 

 lar masses of barbarism. This social cataclysm 

 was stemmed by the young Christian Church, 

 which, for a millennium after, remained the one 

 beneficent and potent agency in European civili 

 zation. Consequently, as the best intellects were 

 everywhere in the Church, theology flourished 

 and science was neglected. The meagre biblical 

 account of creation was interpreted in the light 

 or, rather, darkness of those first crude impres 

 sions which our senses give us of things ; and 

 it was believed that the world had not been in 

 existence more than five or six thousand years, 

 that the earth was the middle point of the world, 

 and man the central object of creation, with the \ 

 Church about him, hell beneath the earth, and 

 heaven stretching beyond the utmost rim of the 

 celestial universe, through orders of angelic hie- 

 rarchies, up to the throne of God himself ! At 

 the touch of Copernicus and Galileo, however, this 

 whole fabric collapsed. And modern science, 

 with which the age had long been in travail, was 

 born. 



4 



