DARWINISM AND EVOLUTION 187 



to a large extent justified by the actual facts of tlie 

 psychological upheaval. Darwin's work forms on the 

 whole the central keystone of the evolutionary system, 

 and deserves the honour which has been thrust upon it 

 of supporting by its own mass the entire superstructure 

 of the development theory. 



For, in the first place, Darwin had to deal with the 

 science of life, the science where the opposition to 

 evolutionism was sure to be strongest, and where the 

 forces and tendencies in favour of obscurantism were 

 sure to gather in fullest force. Every other great 

 onward step in our knowledge of our own relation to 

 the universe of which we form a part had been com- 

 pelled indeed to run the gauntlet, in its own time, of 

 ecclesiastical censure and of popular dislike. Those 

 inveterate prejudices of human ignorance which sedu- 

 lously hide their genuine shape under the guise of 

 dogma masquerading as religion, had long since brought 

 to bear their baneful resources upon the discoveries of 

 Copernicus and the theories of Galileo, as blind, mislead- 

 ing, and diabolical lights, opposed to the sure and 

 certain warranty of Holy Scripture. Newton, again, 

 had in due time been blamed in that he boldly sub- 

 stituted (as his critics declared) the bald and barren 

 formula of gravitation for the personal superinten- 

 dence of a divine Providence. Laplace had been 

 accused of dethroning the deity from the centre and 

 governance of his celestial system. Around the early 

 geologists the battle of the six days of creation 

 had raged fiercely for nearly half a century. But 

 all these varying modes of thought, though deemed 

 heretical enough in their own day, had touched, as it 



