1 88 CHARLES DARWIN 



were, but the minor ramparts and unimportant out- 

 works of the great obscurantist dogmatic strongholds : 

 Darwinism, by openly attacking the inmost problems of 

 life and mind, had brought to bear its powerful artillery 

 upon the very keep and highest tower of the fortress 

 itself. The belief that the various stars, planets, and 

 satellites had or had not been wisely created in their 

 existing positions, and with their present orbits, move- 

 ments, and relations accurately fore-measured, did not 

 fundamentally affect, for good or evil, the cherished 

 dogmas of the ordinary multitude. But the analogous 

 belief in the distinct and separate creation of plants and 

 animals, and more especially of the human species, was 

 far more closely and intimately bound up with all the 

 current religious conceptions. It was at first supposed, 

 not perhaps without some practical wisdom, that to upset 

 the primitive faith in the separate creation of living 

 beings was to loosen and imperil the very foundations of 

 common morality and revealed religion. The c argument 

 from design' had been immemorially regarded as the 

 principal buttress of orthodox thought. Theologians had 

 unwisely staked their all upon the teleological dogma, 

 and could ill afford to retire without a blow from that 

 tenaciously defended bastion of their main position. 

 Hence the evolutionary concept had its hardest fight to 

 wage over the biological field ; and when that field was 

 once fairly won, it had kittle more to fear from banded 

 preconceptions and established prejudices in any other 

 portion of the wide territory it claimed for its own. 



In the second place, biological evolution, firmly 

 established by Darwin on a safe, certain, and unim- 

 peachable basis, led naturally and almost inevitably to 



