534 



ON THE RECEPTION OF 



importance of the natural processes on which Darwin founds 

 his deductions are no more doubted than those of growth 

 and multipUcation ; and, whether the full potency attributed 

 to them is admitted or not, no one doubts their vast and far- 

 reaching significance. Wherever the biological sciences are 

 studied, the ' Origin of Species ' lights the paths of the in- 

 vestigator ; wherever they are taught it permeates the course 

 of instruction. Nor has the influence of Darv/inian ideas 

 been less profound, beyond the realms of Biology. The 

 oldest of all philosophies, that of Evolution, was bound hand 

 and foot and cast into utter darkness during the millennium 

 of theological scholasticism. But Darwin poured new life- 

 blood into the ancient frame ; the bonds burst, and the re- 

 vivified thought of ancient Greece has proved itself to be a 

 more adequate expression of the universal order of things 

 than any of the schemes which have been accepted by the 

 credulity and welcomed by the superstition of seventy later 

 generations of men. 



To any one who studies the signs of the times, the emer- 

 gence of the philosophy of Evolution, in the attitude of 

 claimant to the throne of the world of thought, from the 

 limbo of hated and, as many hoped, forgotten things, is the 

 most portentous event of the nineteenth century. But the 

 most effective weapons of the modern champions of Evolu- 

 tion were fabricated by Darwin ; and the ' Origin of Species * 

 has enlisted a formidable body of combatants, trained in the 

 severe school of Physical Science, whose ears might have long 

 remained deaf to the speculations of a priori philosophers. 



I do not think any candid or instructed person will deny 

 the truth of that which has just been asserted. He may hate 

 the very name of Evolution, and may deny its pretensions 

 as vehemently as a Jacobite denied those of George the 

 Second. But there it is — not only as solidly seated as the 

 Hanoverian dynasty, but happily independent of Parlia- 

 mentary sanction — and the dullest antagonists have come to 

 see that they have to deal with an adversary whose bones are 

 to be broken by no amount of bad words. 



