114 CHARLES DARWIN 



understand were convinced at once by the cogency of 

 the argument; those who had not were overpowered 

 and silenced by the weight of the authority and the 

 mass of the learning. A hot battle burst forth at once, 

 no doubt, around the successful volume ; but it was one 

 of those battles which are aroused only by great truths, 

 a battle in which the victory is a foregone conclusion, 

 and the rancour of the assailants the highest compliment 

 to the prowess of the assailed. 



Darwin himself, in his quiet country home at Down, 

 was simply astonished at the rapid success of his own 

 work. The first edition was published at the end of 

 November 1859; it was exhausted almost immediately, 

 and a second was got ready in hot haste by the beginning 

 of January 1860. In less than six weeks the book had 

 become famous, and Darwin found himself the centre of 

 a European contest, waged with exceeding bitterness, 

 over the truth or falsity of his wonderful volume. To the 

 world at large Darwinism and evolution became at once 

 synonymous terms. The same people who would entirely 

 ascribe the Protestant Reformation to the account of 

 Luther, and the inductive philosophy to the account of 

 Bacon, also believed, in the simplicity of their hearts, that 

 the whole vast evolutionary movement was due at bottom 

 to that very insidious and dangerous book of Mr. Darwin's. 



The fact is, profound as had been the impulses in 

 the evolutionary direction among men of science before 

 Darwin's work appeared at all, immense as were the 

 throes and pangs of labour throughout all Europe which 

 preceded and accompanied its actual birth, when it 

 came at last it came to the general world of unscientific 

 readers with all the sudden vividness and novelty of a 



