NATURAL SELECTION 109 



relations of all organic beings to each other," and that 

 they were capable of holding the opinion that con- 

 science and the moral nature of man were something 

 more than the results of molecular movements and 

 cellular agitations. It was very unsafe in those days 

 to doubt the validity and authority of a single 

 assumption of the author of the creed of science. 



There is, I think, somewhat more tolerance at the 

 present day ; at least, within the last few years I have 

 come across sporadic magazine articles whose writers 

 have been permitted to assail on several points the 

 accepted creed, and even to direct attention to the 

 fact that there is not a single point at which Darwin's 

 theory establishes a vital connection with Nature and 

 her known laws. As may well be supposed, I who 

 do not accept, but spurn Darwin's explanation of the 

 evolutionary processes of Nature, and who believe in 

 a God and in man's responsibility as a moral being, 

 have felt myself constrained to speak humbly and 

 with bated breath in presence of contemptuous 

 science. Is there any man living who at the present 

 hour would be prepared to deny that the star of 

 Newton has paled before the superior brightness of 

 that of Darwin, and that the intellectual greatness of 

 such men as Bacon and Leibnitz has, in comparison 

 with his, suffered disastrous eclipse ? But in all 

 humility I take the liberty of reserving my own 

 opinion upon such matters. 



If I am asked how, with all his gifts as a Nature 

 specialist, and all his shrewdness as a close observer, 



