WHAT TS DARWINISM? 145 



for his theory is that it is possible. His mode 

 of arguing is that if we suppose this and that, 

 then it may have happened thus and so. 

 Amiable and attractive as the man presents 

 himself in his writings, it rouses indignation, in 

 one class at least of his readers, to see him by 

 such a mode of arguing reaching conclusions 

 which are subversive of the fundamental truths 

 of religion. 



3. Another fact cannot fail to attract atten- 

 tion. When the theory of evolution was pro- 

 pounded in 1844 in the '' Vestiges of Creation," 

 it was universally rejected ; when proposed by 

 Mr. Darwin, less than twenty years afterward, it 

 was received with acclamation. Why is this ? 

 The facts are now what they were then. They 

 were as well known then as they are now. The 

 theory, so far as evolution is concerned, was 

 then just what it is now. How then is it, that 

 what was scientifically false in 1844 is scien- 

 tifically true in 1864 ? When a drama is in- 

 troduced in a theatre and universally con- 

 demned, and a little while afterward, with a 

 little change in the scenery, it is received with 

 rapturous applause, the natural conclusion is, 

 that the change is in the audience and not in 

 the drama. 



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