Zoology as Related to Evolution. 211 



atory doctrine the production of all the varieties of rock 

 from one central mass ; Harvey, explaining with his circu- 

 lation of the blood the moving of a thousand little drops 

 from one common fountain of life ; and Herbert Spencer, 

 explaining with his grand synthetic philosophy the evolu- 

 tion of the universe as a whole from one starting-point of 

 matter and force,- all sweeping along in the same path of a 

 single natural cause for a series of widely different results 

 all surrounded zoolgoy with an atmosphere which inevitably 

 helped to sweep its thinkers on to Darwin's like new truth. 



Even the changing climate of the religious world was not 

 without its modifying effect. The zoological mind, the 

 same as the thinking mind everywhere, felt the inspiring 

 warmth of the new summer, the delicious trouble in the 

 moral ground, that with the Reformation began coming to 

 the world of men. Ideas that Buffon eould only hint in 

 the cellar, Darwin could proclaim unhindered on the house- 

 top The skepticism of religion became the faith of science. 

 And just in proportion as the Church got rid of its doctrine 

 that man had gone down from his primitive perfection to 

 being "a worm of the dust," it became possible for the 

 lecture-room to show that his being a worm was the very 

 condition from which he had come up. 



Nor were humbler agencies lacking as contributors to the 

 grand result. Darwin notoriously was started on the track 

 of his doctrine of how species originate by what he found 

 in the farmyard and the garden. The experience of breeders 

 down through long ages had accumulated a vast fund of 

 practical knowledge on the subject, overlooked by other 

 scientists, that he was not ashamed to sit at their feet and 

 learn. Hodge was found not to have raised his pigs through 

 so many generations only for pork. The story of the crafty 

 Jacob in the sheepfolds of old Laban was discovered to 

 have a truth in it beyond anything the most inveterate be- 

 liever in biblical infallibility had ever dreamed of. Doves, 

 drawing of old the chariot of Venus, drew for him the 

 fairer one of Wisdom. Mares bred to win prizes at the Derby 

 were taught under his touch to win them on the race-course 

 of science. And while other men had sought truth by con- 

 verse with the gods, and thought of it as too holy a thing 

 to be enshrined in aught but learned tongues, its nineteenth- 

 century disciple found it, like the Magi of old, cradled in a 

 stable and uttering itself in that most despised of all things, 

 " horse talk," illustrating anew Emerson's words : 



