146 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



We certainly find the keynote of Evolution in 

 Heraclitus, and more than two thousand years after 

 his time Herbert Spencer, above all men, had 

 removed it from the empirical stage, and placed it 

 on a base broad as the facts which supported it. 

 But it needed the leaven of the human and personal 

 to stir it into life, and touch man in his various 

 interests ; and not all that Mr. Spencer had done in 

 application of the theory of development to social 

 questions and institutions could avail much till 

 Darwin's theory gave it practical shape. Disserta- 

 tions on the passage of the 'homogeneous to the 

 heterogeneous ' ; explanations of the theory of the 

 evolution of complex sidereal systems out of diffused 

 vapours of seemingly simple texture; interested 

 people only in a vague and wondering fashion. 

 But when Darwin illustrated the theory of the 

 modification of life -forms by familiar examples 

 gathered from his own experiments and observations, 

 and from intercourse with breeders of pigeons, horses, 

 and dogs, this went to men's 'business and bosoms,' 

 and if the vulgar interpreted Darwinism, as some, 

 who should know better, interpret it even now, as 

 explaining man's descent from a monkey, or how a 

 bear became a whale by taking to swimming, the 

 thoughtful accepted it as a master-key unlocking not 

 the mystery of origins or of causes of variations, 

 but the mystery of the ceaselessly-acting agent which, 

 operating on favourable variations, has brought 

 about myriads of species from simple forms. 



As Huxley reminds us in the passage quoted 

 above, the attitude of the clergy towards the theory 

 of Evolution has undergone an astounding change. 



