THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 549 



might conceivably, after some fashion, have made shift with a hypoth- 

 esis of this kind ; but it is hard to see how any one could suppose it in 

 any degree advantageous to religion. It had not even the poor merit 

 of being anthropomorphic. For no man out of a madhouse ever be- 

 haved in such a manner as that in which, by this hypothesis, the Creator 

 of the universe was supposed to have behaved. Ascribing to him both 

 the ability and the disposition to intervene with absolute freedom in 

 natural — or, at least, in organic — phenomena, the theory also repre- 

 sented him as incapable of intervening intelligently or effectually. 



That men of great abilities were unable to see the true character of 

 the hypothesis which great numbers of them so long embraced, is cer- 

 tainly an interesting, if not an encouraging, fact in the history of the 

 human intellect. But the capacity of theological prepossessions and 

 religious feeling to retard and confuse intellectual processes is an old 

 story. More remarkable, perhaps, is the failure, for an equally long 

 period, of a number of men not impeded by theological prepossessions 

 — men who were capable of seeing the absurdities of the special creation 

 hypothesis — to recognize the methodological superiority and the promise 

 of scientific fruitfulness inhering in the other hypothesis, or even to 

 recognize the logical obligation to choose between the only two hypoth- 

 eses available. Men of science of the present generation have perhaps 

 little to learn from a consideration of the reasons which prevented a 

 Cuvier, a Miller, a Sedgwick or an Agassiz from accepting the theory 

 of evolution. But there may still be for us profitable matter for re- 

 flection in a consideration of the reasons which prevented a Huxley 

 from finding, in 1846, anything of value in facts and reasonings which 

 thirteen years later he was, with unequalled vigor and skill, proclaim- 

 ing from the housetops. 



The only historian of English thought known to me who has quite 

 truly stated what I believe to be the fact about this episode in the his- 

 tory of scientific opinion, is Mr. A. W. Benn. In his " Modern Eng- 

 land " 45 he observes concerning the " Vestiges " : 



Hardly any advance has since been made on Chambers' general arguments, 

 which at the time they appeared would have been accepted as convincing, but 

 for theological truculence and scientific timidity. And Chambers himself only 

 gave unity to thoughts already in wide circulation. . . . Chambers was not a 

 scientific expert, nor altogether an original thinker, but he had studied scientific 

 literature to better purpose than any professor. . . . The considerations that 

 now recommend evolution to popular audiences are no other than those urged 

 in the " Vestiges." 



'o'- 



The truth of this is, I think, by no means sufficiently recognized by 

 biologists or by historians of science. I hope that the present study may 

 somewhat contribute to the more general acknowledgment of the cor- 

 rectness of Mr. Benn's statement. 



45 1908, II., 307, I., 238. 



