THE DARWINIAN REVOLUTION BEGINS 113 



and a fair hearing. Herbert Spencer was known to be 

 a philosopher : and the practical English nation mis- 

 trusts philosophers : those people probe too deep and soar 

 too high for any sensible person to follow them in all 

 their flights. Robert Chambers, the unknown author of 

 * Vestiges of Creation,' was a shallow sciolist ; it was 

 whispered abroad that he was even inaccurate and 

 slovenly in his facts : and your scientific plodder detests 

 the very shadow of minute inaccuracy, though it speak 

 with the tongues of men and angels, and be bound up 

 with all the grasp and power of a Newton or a Goethe. 

 But Charles Darwin was a known personage, an F.R.S., 

 a distinguished authority upon coral reefs and barnacles, 

 a great geologist, a great biologist, a great observer and 

 indefatigable collector. His book came into the public 

 hands stamped with the imprimatur of official recogni- 

 tion. Darwin was the father of the infant theory ; 

 Lyell and Hooker stood for its sponsors. The world 

 could not afford to despise its contents ; they could not 

 brand its author offhand as a clever dreamer or a foolish 

 amateur, or consign him to the dreaded English limbo 

 of the ' mere theorist.' 



Next, for the other and far more important internal 

 consideration. The book itself was one of the greatest, 

 the most learned, the most lucid, the most logical, the 

 most crushing, the most conclusive, that the world had 

 ever yet seen. Step by step, and principle by principle, 

 it proved every point in its progress triumphantly 

 before it went on to demonstrate the next. So vast an 

 array of facts so thoroughly in hand had never before 

 been mustered and marshalled in favour of any bio- 

 logical theory. Those who had insight to learn and 

 11 



