Triumph of Darwinism 125 



for evolution, and not for natural selection, that he 

 spoke ; and throughout his life afterwards, as he ex- 

 pressed it, it was this " ancient doctrine of evolution, 

 rehabilitated and placed upon a sound scientific founda- 

 tion, since, and in consequence of, the publication of 

 The Origin of Species'' that furnished him with the chief 

 inspiration of his work. The clear accuracy of his 

 original judgment upon Darwin's work has been abun- 

 dantly justified by subsequent history. Since 1859 the 

 case for ev^olution has become stronger and stronger 

 until it can no longer be regarded as one of two possible 

 hypotheses in the field, but as the ovXy view credible 

 to those who have even a moderate acquaintance with 

 the facts. In 1894, thirty years after the famous meet- 

 ing at Oxford, the British Association again met in that 

 historic town. The President, Lord Salisbury, a de- 

 vout Churchman and with a notably critical intellect, 

 declared of Darwin : 



" He has, as a matter of fact, disposed of the doctrine of the 

 immutability of species. . . . Few now are found to doubt 

 that animals separated by differences far exceeding those that 

 distinguish what we know as species have yet descended from 

 common ancestors." 



Huxley, in replying to the address, used the following 

 words : 



"As he noted in the Presidential Address to which they had 

 just listened with such well deserved interest, he found it 

 stated, on what was then and at this time the highest authority 

 for them, that as a matter of fact the doctrine of the immuta- 

 bility of species was disposed of and gone. He found that few 

 were now found to doubt that animals separated by differences 

 far exceeding those which they knew as species were yet de- 

 scended from a common ancestry. Those were their proposi- 

 tions ; those were the fundamental principles of the doctrine 

 of evolution." 



