IB. VI.] THE ATTITUDE OF PHILOSOPHY. 4:5 



in th*^ infliction upon society of the evils of atheism and 

 anarchy. Hence, as the Doctrine of Creation is itself held 

 to be one of these divinely-sanctioned religious beliefs, the 

 scientific tendency to supersede this doctrine by the con- 

 ception of God as manifested not in spasmodic acts of 

 miracle, but in the gradual and orderly evolution of things, 

 is stigmatized as an atheistical tendency, and the upholders 

 of the new view are naturally enough accredited with a 

 desire to subvert the foundations of religion and of good 

 conduct. Hence it is that even such scientific writers as 

 Mr, Mivart — unable to escape the evidence in favour of 

 Evolution which is supplied by their own studies, yet 

 somewhat desperately clinging to the philosophic views 

 which are founded upon the Doctrine of Creation — are now 

 and then guilty of remarks much better befitting ignorant 

 priests than men who have lived in direct contact with 

 modern scientific thought. That dominance of the statical 

 habit of thinking, which leads Mr. Mivart to prefer the 

 irregular action of " sudden jumps " to the slow but regular 

 operation of natural selection, leads him also to assert that 

 the Doctrine of Evolution, as consistently held by Prof. 

 Huxley, tends toward the intellectual and moral degrada- 

 tion of mankind and toward the genesis of " horrors worse 

 than those of the Parisian Commune ! " * 



Before proceeding to show how assertions of this sort are, 

 from the evolutionist's point of view, as reckless and absurd 

 as, from Mr. Mivart's point of view, they are justifiable and 

 logical, let us note that the statical habit of thinking is by 

 no means monopolized by the orthodox, or by those whose 

 philosophic theories consist mainly of elements inherited 

 from primeval mythology. The progress of scientific dis- 

 covery since the time of Galileo and Bacon has but gradually, 

 and as its newest result, established the Doctrine of Evo- 

 lution; yet it has, from the very outset, assumed a hostile 

 * Contemporary Review, January 1872, p. 196. 



