The Need for " Beak and Claws" 1 1 1 



evolution became accepted, and for the next thirty 

 3'ears of his hfe he was the leader in the battle for Dar- 

 winism. It was natural that the new view^s, especiall}- 

 in their extension to man himself, should arouse the 

 keenest opposition. To those of the present generation, 

 w^ho have grown up in an atmosphere impregnated b}- 

 the doctrine of descent, the position of the world in 

 i860 seems " older than a tale written in any book." 

 As w^e have tried to shew in the preceding chapter, 

 biological science was partially prepared ; the muta- 

 bility of species and the orderl}' succession of organic 

 life were in the air. But the application of the doctrine 

 to man came as a greater shock to civilised sentiment 

 than would have occurred a century earlier. It came 

 as a disaster even to the clearest and calmest intellects, 

 for it seemed to drag down to the dirt the nobility of 

 man. Out of the fierce flame of the French Rev^olution, 

 there had come purged and clean the conception of man 

 as an individual and soul. As this century advanced, 

 the conception of the dignity and worth of each indi- 

 vidual man, rich or poor, bond or free, had spread 

 more and more widely, bearing as its fruit the emanci- 

 pation of slaves, the spread of political freedom, the 

 amelioration of the conditions of the dregs of humanity, 

 the right of all to education, the possibility of universal 

 peace based on the brotherhood of man ; and all that 

 was best in philosophy and in political practice seemed 

 bound up with a lofty view of the unit of mankind. 

 Carlyle himself, to whom many of the freest and 

 noblest spirits in Europe were beginning to look as to 

 an inspired prophet, could see in it nothing but a 

 " monkey damnification of mankind." The dogmatic 

 world saw in it nothing but a deliberate and malicious 

 assault upon religion. The Church of England in 



