MISCONCEPTIONS OF THEORT. 207 



ago. Darwinism, however, is not Evolution, as is so 

 often imagined, but only one of the numerous at- 

 tempts which have been made to explain the modus 

 operandi of Evolution. Nevertheless, for a long time 

 Darwinism and Evolution were regarded as synony- 

 mous as in the popular mind they are still synony- 

 mous even by those who should have been better 

 informed. The objections which were advanced 

 against Darwinism were urged against Evolution, 

 and vice versa. And in most of the controversies 

 relating to these topics there was a lamentable, often 

 a ridiculous, ignorance of the teachings of the 

 Church, and this, more than anything else, accounts 

 for the odium theologicum, and the odium scientifi- 

 cum, which have been so conspicuous in religious 

 and scientific literature during the past third of a 

 century. 



During the first few years after the publication 

 of " The Origin of Species," there were but few, even 

 among professed men of science, who did not con- 

 demn Darwinism as irreligious in tendency, if not 

 distinctly atheistic in principle. " Materialistic " and 

 " pantheistic," were, however, the epithets usually 

 applied both to Evolution and the theory so pa- 

 tiently elaborated by Darwin. Prof. Louis Agas- 

 siz, as we have already seen, did not hesitate to 

 denounce "the transmutation theory as a scientific 

 mistake, untrue in its facts, unscientific in its method, 

 and mischievous in its tendency." Certain others of 

 Darwin's critics characterized his theory as " an acer- 

 vation of endless conjectures," as an " utterly rotten 

 fabric of guess and speculation," and reprobated his 



