et Imbecillitate Darzviniana. 33 



fie absurdity, was nevertheless, such was the 

 low state of logic in its day, a gigantic 

 success. Four things combined to secure 

 for it the favour of the world, and to elevate 

 its originator to the rank of a scientific 

 deity. 



I. It fitted exactly, as we have already 

 seen,- into fashionable theories of geology, 

 being in fact nothing else than the further 

 application of those theories, the comple- 

 tion of their scheme, by subjecting the plants 

 and animals to the same treatment as the 

 rocks i. All things in Nature, even man 

 himself, were now placed upon the same 

 footing: all alike were held to have arisen 

 by slight successive increments accumulated 

 in vast periods of time. Thus the theory 

 found, in one aspect, its battle half won. 



1 Even the rocks cannot be explained on Lyellian prin- 

 ciples : but the absurdity of endeavouring to account on 

 those principles for organic forms is infinitely greater. 



D 



