284 TKOPICAL NATURE, AND OTHER ESSAYS. 



almost sank into insignificance at a very early period of 

 the inquiry, in comparison with the far more momentous 

 and more exciting problem of the development of man 

 from some lower animal form, which the theories of Mr. 

 Darwin and of Mr. Herbert Spencer soon showed to be 

 inseparably bound up with it. This has been, and to 

 some extent still is, the subject of fierce conflict ; but 

 the controversy as to the fact of such development is 

 now almost at an end, since one of the most talented 

 representatives of Catholic theology, and an anatomist 

 of high standing — Professor Mivart — ^fully adopts it as 

 regards physical structure, reserving his opposition for 

 those parts of the theory which would deduce man's 

 whole intellectual and moral nature from the same 

 source and by a similar mode of development. 



Never, perhaps, in the whole history of science or phi- 

 losophy has so great a revolution in thought and opinion 

 been effected as in the twelve years from 1859 to 1871, the 

 respective dates of publication of Mr. Darwin's Origin of 

 Species and Descent of Man. Up to the commencement 

 of this period the belief in the independent creation or 

 origin of the species of animals and plants, and the very 

 recent appearance of man upon the earth, were, prac- 

 tically, universal. Long before the end of it these two 

 beliefs had utterly disappeared, not only in the scientific 

 world, but almost equally so among the literary and 

 educated classes generally. The belief in the inde- 

 pendent origin of man held its ground somewhat longer; 

 but the publication of Mr. Darwin's great work gave 

 even that its death-blow, for hardly any one capable of 

 judging of the evidence now doubts the derivative nature 

 of man's bodily structure as a whole, although many be- 



