14 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [CHAP. 



and defenders. Nor have the supporters of the theory 

 much reason, in many cases, to blame the more or less 

 unskilful and hasty attacks of adversaries, seeing that 

 those attacks have been in great part due to the unskilful 

 and perverse advocacy of the cause on the part of some of 

 its adherents. If the odium tlieologicum has inspired some 

 of its opponents, it is undeniable that the odium antitlieo- 

 logicum has possessed not a few of its supporters. It is 

 true (and in appreciating some of Mr. Darwin's expressions 

 it should never be forgotten) that the theory has been both 

 at its first promulgation and since vehemently attacked 

 and denounced as unchristian, nay, as necessarily atheistic ; 

 but it is not less true that it has been made use of as a 

 weapon of offence by irreligious writers, and has been 

 again and again, especially in continental Europe, thrown, 

 as it were, in the face of believers, with sneers and con- 

 tumely. When we recollect the warmth with which what 

 he thought was Darwinism was advocated by such a writer 

 as Professor Vogt, one cause of his zeal was not far to seek 

 a zeal, by the way, certainly not " according to know- 

 ledge;" for few conceptions could have been more con- 

 flicting with true Darwinism than the theory he formerly 

 maintained, but has since abandoned, viz. that the men of 

 the Old World were descended from African and Asiatic apes, 

 while, similarly, the American apes were the progenitors 

 of the human beings of the New World. The cause of 

 this palpable error in a too eager disciple, one might hope, 

 was not anxiety to snatch up all or any arms available 

 against Christianity, were it not for the tone unhappily 

 adopted by him. But it is unfortunately quite impossible 

 to mistake his meaning and intention, for he is a 

 writer whose offensiveness is gross, while it is sometimes 



