122 CHARLES DARWIN 



itself told powerfully in favour of Charles Darwin's 

 novel theories : there is no evidence more valuable to a 

 cause than that which it extorts by moral force, in spite 

 of himself, from the faltering lips of an unwilling 

 witness. 



The same year that saw the publication of Lyell's 

 'Antiquity of Man' saw also the first appearance of 

 Huxley's work on 'Man's Place in Nature.' Darwin 

 himself had been anxious rather than otherwise to avoid 

 too close reference to the implications of his theory as 

 regards the origin and destiny of the human race. He 

 had desired that his strictly scientific views on the rise 

 of specific distinctions should be judged entirely on 

 their own merits, unhampered by the interference of 

 real or supposed theological and ethical considerations. 

 His own language on all such subjects, wherever he was 

 compelled to trench on them in the ' Origin of Species,' 

 was guarded and conciliatory ; he scarcely referred at 

 all to man or his history ; and his occasional notices of 

 the moving principle and first cause of the entire cosmos 

 were reverential and religious in the truest sense and in 

 the highest degree. But you cannot let loose a moral 

 whirlwind, and then attempt to direct its course ; you 

 cannot open the floodgates of opinion or of speculation, 

 and then pretend to set limits to the scope of their 

 restless motion. Darwin soon found out that people 

 would insist in drawing inferences beyond what was 

 written, and in seeing implicit conclusions when they 

 were not definitely formulated in the words of their 

 author. ' Man is perennially interesting to man,' says 

 the great chaotic American thinker ; and whatever all- 

 embracing truth you set before him, you may be sure 



