“The Origin of Species” 497 
The acts of religion which may result from such convictions, ie. 
devotion in all its forms, prayer, praise, sacraments, are left un- 
mentioned. It is clear that they are not, as now to us, sociological 
survivals of great interest and importance, but rather matters too 
private, too personal, for discussion. 
Huxley, writing in the Contemporary Review’, says, “In a dozen 
years The Origin of Species has worked as complete a revolution in 
biological science as the Principia did in astronomy.” It has done 
so because, in the words of Helmholtz, it contained “an essentially 
new creative thought,” that of the continuity of life, the absence of 
breaks. In the two most conservative subjects, Religion and Classics, 
this creative ferment was slow indeed to work. Darwin himself 
felt strongly “that a man should not publish on a subject to which 
he has not given special and continuous thought,’ and hence wrote 
little on religion and with manifest reluctance, though, as already 
seen, in answer to pertinacious inquiry he gave an outline of his own 
views. But none the less he foresaw that his doctrine must have, for 
the history of man’s mental evolution, issues wider than those with 
which he was prepared personally to deal. He writes, in The Origin 
of Species’, “In the future I see open fields for far more important 
researches. Psychology will be securely based on the foundation 
already well laid by Mr Herbert Spencer, that of the necessary 
acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation.” 
Nowhere, it is true, does Darwin definitely say that he regarded 
religion as a set of phenomena, the development of which may be 
studied from the psychological standpoint. Rather we infer from his 
piety—in the beautiful Roman sense—towards tradition and associa- 
tion, that religion was to him in some way sacrosanct. But it is 
delightful to see how his heart went out towards the new method 
in religious study which he had himself, if half-unconsciously, in- 
augurated. Writing in 1871 to Dr Tylor, on the publication of his 
Primitive Culture, he says', “It is wonderful how you trace animism 
from the lower races up the religious belief of the highest races. It 
will make me for the future look at religion—a belief in the soul, 
etc.—from a new point of view.” 
Psychology was henceforth to be based on “the necessary acquire- 
ment of each mental capacity by gradation.” With these memorable 
words the door closes on the old and opens on the new horizon. 
The mental focus henceforth is not on the maintaining or refuting of 
an orthodoxy but on the genesis and evolution of a capacity, not on 
perfection but on process. Continuous evolution leaves no gap for 
revelation sudden and complete. We have henceforth to ask, not 
1 1871. 2 6th edition, p. 428. 3 Life and Letters, Vol. 11. p. 151. 
D. 32 
