54 FIFTY YEARS OF DARWINISM 



chief to complain of the strong new light that was 

 flooding his neighbors' lands no less than his own, 

 thinking in error not inexcusable at the dawning 

 of the intelligence of mankind, that their loss 

 must be his gain. 



And now in my concluding words I have done 

 Avith controversy. 



Fifty years have passed away, and we may be 

 led to forget their deepest lesson, may be tempted 

 to think lightly of the foUies and the narrow- 

 ness, as they appear to us, of the times that are 

 gone. This in itself would be a narrow view. 



The distance from which we look back on the 

 conflict is a help in the endeavor to reahze its 

 meaning. Huxley's Address on The Coming of 

 Age of the Origin was a peean of triumph. Tyn- 

 dall, his friend, further removed from the strug- 

 gle by the nature of his Ufe-work, realized its 

 pathos when he spoke in his Belfast Address of 

 the pain of the illustrious American naturalist 

 who was forced to recognize the success of the 

 teachings he could not accept, — the naturahst 

 who dictated in the last year of his life the 

 unalterable conviction that these teachings were 

 false. 



I name no names, but I think of leaders of 

 organic evolution in this continent and in Europe, 

 — sons of great men to whom the new thoughts 

 brought the deepest grief, men who struggled 

 tenaciously and indomitably against them. And 

 full many a household imknown to fame was the 



