478 Darwinism and Religious Thought 



It must further be remembered that the earlier discussion now, as 

 I hope to show, producing favourable results, created also for a time 

 grave damage, not only in the disturbance of faith and the loss of 

 men — a loss not repaired by a change in the currents of debate — but 

 in what I believe to be a still more serious respect. I mean the 

 introduction of a habit of facile and untested hypothesis in religious 

 as in other departments of thought. 



Darwin is not responsible for this, but he is in part the cause of 

 it. Great ideas are dangerous guests in narrow minds; and thus it 

 has happened that Darwin — the most patient of scientific workers, in 

 whom hypothesis waited upon research, or if it provisionally out- 

 stepped it did so only with the most scrupulously careful acknowledg- 

 ment — has led smaller and less conscientious men in natural science, 

 in history, and in theology to an over-eager confidence in probable 

 conjecture and a loose grip upon the facts of experience. It is not 

 too much to say that in many quarters the age of materialism was 

 the least matter-of-fact age conceivable, and the age of science the 

 age which showed least of the patient temper of inquiry. 



I have indicated, as shortly as I could, some losses and dangers 

 which in a balanced account of Darwin's influence would be discussed 

 at length. 



One other loss must be mentioned. It is a defect in our thought 

 which, in some quarters, has by itself almost cancelled all the advan- 

 tages secured. I mean the exaggerated emphasis on uniformity or 

 continuity ; the unwillingness to rest any part of faith or of our 

 practical expectation upon anything that from any point of view 

 can be called exceptional. The high degree of success reached by 

 naturalists in tracing, or reasonably conjecturing, the small begin- 

 nings of great differences, has led the inconsiderate to believe that 

 anything may in time become anything else. 



It is true that this exaggeration of the belief in uniformity has 

 produced in turn its own perilous reaction. From refusing to believe 

 whatever can be called exceptional, some have come to believe 

 whatever can be called wonderful. 



But, on the whole, the discontinuous or highly various character 

 of experience received for many years too little deliberate attention. 

 The conception of uniformity which is a necessity of scientific de- 

 scription has been taken for the substance of history. We have 

 accepted a postulate of scientific method as if it were a conclusion 

 of scientific demonstration. In the name of a generalisation which, 

 however just on the lines of a particular method, is the prize of a 

 difficult exploit of reflexion, we have discarded the direct impressions 

 of experience ; or, perhaps it is more true to say, we have used for 

 the criticism of alleged experiences a doctrine of uniformity which 



