552 



ON THE RECEPTION OF 



course for those who had no other object than the attainment 

 of truth, was to accept " Darwinism " as a working hypothesis, 

 and see what could be made of it. Either it would prove its 

 capacity to elucidate the facts of organic life, or it would 

 break down under the strain. This was surely the dictate of 

 common sense ; and, for once, common sense carried the day. 

 The result has been that complete volte-face of the whole 

 scientific world, which must seem so surprising to the present 

 generation. I do not mean to say that all the leaders of 

 biological science have avowed themselves Darwinians ; but 

 I do not think that there is a single zoologist, or botanist, or 

 palaeontologist, among the multitude of active workers of this 

 generation, who is other than an evolutionist, profoundly in- 

 fluenced by Darwin's views. Whatever may be the ultimate 

 fate of the particular theory put forth by Darwin, I venture 

 to affirm that, so far as my knowledge goes, all the ingenuity 

 and all the learning of hostile critics has not enabled them to 

 adduce a solitary fact, of which it can be said, this is irrecon- 

 cilable with the Darwinian theory. In the prodigious variety 

 and complexity of organic nature, there are multitudes of 

 phenomena which are not deducible from any generalisations 

 we have yet reached. But the same may be said of every 

 other class of natural objects. I believe that astronomers 

 cannot yet get the moon's motions into perfect accordance 

 with the theory of gravitation. 



It would be inappropriate, even if it were possible, to dis- 

 cuss the difficulties and unresolved problems which have 

 hitherto met the evolutionist, and which will probably con- 

 tinue to puzzle him for generations to come, in the course of 

 this brief history of the reception of Mr. Darwin's great work. 

 But there are two or three objections of a more general char- 

 acter, based, or supposed to be based, upon philosophical 

 and theological foundations, which were loudly expressed in 

 the early days of the Darwinian controversy, and which, 

 though they have been answered over and over again, crop 

 up now and then to the present day. 



