42 Charles Hobert Darwin. 



obscured by the intenser interest of the adjacent matter. 

 Tliere was another outburst of odium theologicuvi almost as 

 vehement as that Avhicli was occasioned by the book of 1JS59. 

 But the vehemence of the odium scientifficKm was consider- 

 ably less than then. And it was very noticeable that among- 

 those Avho cried out against Darwin in 1872 there were few, 

 if any, of the leading men of science. The six years that 

 had elapsed since he had said to Haeckel that he should not 

 live to see the triumph of his principles had synchronized 

 with an immense advance of scientific thought in the direc- 

 tion of that triumph. In America the personal cliarm of 

 Agassiz could not defend his pupils from the force of Dar- 

 win's argument, and almost to a man they had accepted his 

 conclusions. In Germany the greatest were the first to give 

 in their adhesion. Where such a giant as Johannes ]\Iuller 

 led the way, it was entirely safe for lesser men to follow. 

 England, if not so quick as Germany to recognize that a 

 greater than Xewton was here, was still not slow, consider- 

 ing the prejudices that she had to conquer. The tide of 

 victory rolled on Avith steadily increasing force and volume 

 as the years went by, and when, in 1880, Huxley lectured 

 on '' The Coming of Age of the ' Origin of Species,' " he 

 could say with perfect confidence : " Those who have watched 

 the progress of science within the last ten years Avill bear me 

 out to the full when I fl,ssert that there is no field of biolog- 

 ical inquiry in Avhich the influence of the ' ( )rigin of Species ' 

 is not traceable ; the foremost men of science in every coun- 

 try are either avowed champions of its leading doctrines or 

 at any rate abstain from opposing them ; a host of young- 

 and ardent investigators seek for and find inspiration in Mr. 

 Darwin's great work ; and the general doctrine of Evolution, 

 to one side of which it gives expression, finds in the phe- 

 nomena of biology a firm base of operations whence it may 

 conduct its conquest of the whole realm of nature." 



In the history of thought there is nothing more remark- 

 able than the speedy triumph of a doctrine running so 

 strongly counter to the prejudices of mankind in favor of a 

 mechanic-God and so offensive to their amour propre through 

 its assertion of their community of life with lower and the 

 lowest animal forms. How are we to account for such a vic- 

 tory ? Largely by the intrinsic rationality of the doctrine 

 taught. Next by the overwhelming mass of evidence which 

 Darwin brought to its elucidation. Last, but not least, by 



