160 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do 

 miracles become that the men at that time were ignorant 

 and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us, 

 that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written 

 simultaneously with the events, that they differ in many 

 important details, far too important, as it seemed to me, to 

 be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses ; by 

 such reflections as these, which I give not as having the 

 least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradu- 

 ally came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. 

 The fact that many false religions have spread over large 

 portions of the earth like wildfire had some weight with me. 



But I was very unwilling to give up my belief; I feel 

 sure of this, for I can well remember often and often in- 

 venting day-dreams of old letters between distinguished 

 Romans, and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or 

 elsewhere, which confirmed in the most striking manner all 

 that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and 

 more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to 

 invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus 

 disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last 

 complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress. 



Although I did not think much about the existence of a 

 personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I 

 will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been 

 driven. The old argument from design in Nature, as given 

 by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, 

 now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. 

 We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful 

 hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelli- 

 gent being, like the hinge of a door by a man. There 

 seems to be no more design in the variability of organic 

 beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the 

 course which the wind blows. But I have discussed this 

 subject at the end of my book on the Variation of Domesti- 

 cated Animals and Plants, and the argument there given 

 has never, as far as I can see, been answered. 



Without doubt, the influence of the conclusions 



