MODERN E VOLUTION 145 



The story of the reception of the work is admir- 

 ably told by Huxley in the chapter which he con- 

 tributed to Darwin's Life and Letters, and it may be 

 commended as useful reading to a generation which, 

 drinking-in Darwinism from its birth, will not readily 

 understand how such storm and outcry as rent the 

 air, both in scientific as well as clerical quarters, 

 could have been raised. ' In fact/ says Huxley, 

 ' the contrast between the present condition of public 

 opinion upon the Darwinian question ; between the 

 estimation in which Darwin's views are now held in 

 the scientific world ; between the acquiescence, or, at 

 least, quiescence, of the theologian of the self-respect- 

 ing order at the present day, and the outburst of 

 antagonism on all sddes in 1858-59, when the new 

 theory respecting the origin of species first became 

 known to the older generation to which I belong, is 

 so startling that, except for documentary evidence, I 

 should be sometimes inclined to think my memories 

 dreams.' The like reflection arises when we con- 

 sider the indifference with which books of the most 

 daring and revolutionary character, both in theology 

 and morals, are treated nowadays, in contrast to 

 the uproar which greeted such a brutum fulmen as 

 Essays and Reviews. As for Colenso's Pentateuch, 

 and books of its type, orthodoxy has long taken 

 them to its bosom. 



So far as the larger number of naturalists, and of 

 the intelligent public who followed their lead, were 

 concerned, there was an absolutely open mind on 

 the question of the mutation of species. There had 

 been, as the foregoing sections of this book have 

 shown, a long time of preparation and speculation. 



K 



