I.] INTRODUCTORY. 25 



It is true (and in appreciating some of Mr. Darwin's ex- 

 pressions 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 contumely. When we recollect the warmth with 

 which what he thought was Darwinism was advocated by 

 such a writer as Prof. Vogt, one cause of his zeal was 

 not far to seek a zeal, by-the-way, certainly not " accord- 

 ing to knowledge ; " for few conceptions could have been 

 more conflicting 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 un- 

 happily adopted by this author. But it is unfortunately 

 quite impossible to mistake his meaning and intention, for 

 he is a writer whose offensiveness is gross, while it is some- 

 times almost surpassed by an amazing shallowness. Of 

 course, as might fully be expected, he adopts and repro- 

 duces the absurdly trivial objections to absolute morality 

 drawn from differences in national customs. 7 And he 

 seems to have as little conception of the distinction be- 

 tween " formally " moral actions and those which are only 

 " materially " moral, as of that between the verbum men- 

 tale and the verbum oris. As an example of his onesided- 

 ness, it may be remarked that he compares the skulls of the 



7 " Lectures on Man," translated by the Anthropological Society, 1864, 

 p. 229. 



2 



