THE COMING OF EVOLUTION 231 



The principle of natural selection weakened im- 

 measurably the old " argument from design " of the 

 Christian apologists. Adaptation of means to ends in 

 plants and animals received a naturalistic interpreta- 

 tion, which, if not complete in the deepest recesses of the 

 problem, went far towards solving it. It was thought 

 to be no longer necessary to invoke an intelligent and 

 beneficent Artificer to explain the details of bodily 

 structure or the protective markings on a butterfly's 

 wing. The need for a Supreme Being, Jehovah, Jove, 

 or Lord, was driven further back, inward, into the heart 

 of man. 



But the destruction of untenable positions was not 

 the only service rendered to an unwilling theology by 

 the revelation of evolution. Forced to reconsider its 

 premisses, it created the new spirit of reverent enquiry, 

 of co-operative thought, of receptive attention. The 

 Metaphysical Society was founded in 1869 by James 

 Knowles, afterwards editor of the Nineteenth Century, 

 with the encouragement of Alfred Tennyson. The 

 meetings brought together such men as Archbishop 

 Thompson, Bishop Ellicott and Dean Stanley, Car- 

 dinal Manning and W. S. Ward, W. E. Gladstone, 

 Lord Selborne, Henry Sidgwick, James Martineau, 

 Frederic Harrison, Lubbock, Huxley, Tyndall, Andrew 

 Clark, John Morley and Leslie Stephen ; while Tenny- 

 son, Ruskin and many other distinguished men were 

 present at the discussions. The personal relations 

 between members of the society made wilful mis- 

 understanding and ill-feeling impossible, and thus 

 created an opportunity for distinguishing between the 

 essential and unessential differences in the issues at 

 stake, and for initiating a change of attitude in the 



