18 FIFTY YEARS OF DARWINISM 



Origin that was so intensely irritating to men 

 whose antagonism was based on religious con- 

 viction. Thus in Sedgwick's letter, from which 

 I have already quoted, we read : 



' Lastly, then, I greatly dislike the concluding chapter 

 not as a summary, for in that light it appears good but 

 I dislike it from the tone of triumphant confidence in which 

 you appeal to the rising generation . . . and prophecy of 

 things not yet in the womb of time, nor (if we are to trust 

 the accumulated experience of human sense and the 

 inferences of its logic) ever likely to be found anywhere but 

 in the fertile womb of man's imagination.' * 



It is remarkable to contrast the maturity, the 

 balance, the judgement, with which Darwin put 

 forward his views, with the rash and haphazard 

 objections and rival suggestions advanced by 

 critics. It is doubtful whether so striking a con- 

 trast is to be found in the history of science 

 on the one side, twenty years of thought and 

 investigation pursued by the greatest of natura- 

 lists ; on the other, off-hand impressions upon 

 a most complex problem hastily studied and 

 usually very imperfectly understood." It is not 

 to be wondered at that Darwin found the early 

 criticisms so entirely worthless. The following 

 extract from an interesting letter to John Scott, 



1 Life and Letters, ii. 250. 



