204 Charles Darwin. 



tion taught it ; and that the diversities and special- 

 isation of organic forms forbade the idea of their 

 derivation from a common parentage, 

 / The universal consensus of mankind maintained 

 /till the sixteenth century the doctrine that the earth 

 / was flat ; that the sun and other planets circled 

 / round the earth ; and that the earth was the great 

 I centre of the universe. The universal consensus of 

 \ mankind for thousands of years is not the universal 

 \ consenus of the enlightened man, nor of the present 

 Xcentury. 



The teachers of revelation have been often mis- 

 /taken. Many are they who once were contemned 

 / and denounced because their utterances were not in 

 / accordance with the opinions of their day, who are 

 now accepted as the champions of a purer religion. 

 One of the wisest priests of England has said that 

 " with a certain class of religionists every invention 

 and discovery is considered impious and unscriptural 

 as long as it is new. Not only the discoveries of 

 astronomy and geology, but steam, gas, electricity, 

 political economy, have all in their turn been de- 

 nounced ; and not least chloroform. Its use in par- 

 turition has been anathematized as an infraction of 

 the penalty pronounced on Eve ! " * It is not I, 

 but a great clergyman, who expresses such senti- 

 ments. 



The objection that the differentiation and special- 

 isation of organic beings gainsay their derivation 

 from a common source is a most weighty one. In 



* Rev. Baden Powell's ' ' Essay on the Spirit of the Inductive Phi- 

 losophy," etc., p. 455. 



