Charles Robert Darwin. 



73 



to prepare a short paper giving a digest of his views on the subject. 

 Both of these papers were read at a meeting of the Linnean Society, 

 and appear in a volume of the Transactions. They created no stir ex- 

 cept among scientists, for people at large did not know of their full 

 significance. This paper was the prelude to the publication of the 

 ' k Origin of Species,'' the first edition of which is dated Nov. 24, 1859. 



It was a fire-brand thrown into a mass of inflammable material. It 

 ran through an edition of thousands in a few months. A second (in 

 March, 1860) and a third appeared, and the world was taken by storm t 

 Advocates and opponents appeared on all sides. Invectives and praises 

 were showered upon the author from all quarters. Nearly the entire 

 bod}' of the clergy rose against him, and from pulpit and sanctum, at 

 home and abroad, he was ridiculed and abused. But his advocates 

 took up the gauntlet, and the battle has raged ever since. One of his 

 earliest and most ardent admirers was Prof. Huxley, who joined issue 

 with the detractors, and threw his weight into the scale of Darwin. In 

 a review of the book, Prof. Huxley, after referring to the hostility 

 always shown by the clergy to every advance made in science, said: 

 "Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science, like 

 strangled snakes beside that of Hercules ; and history records that 

 whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter 

 has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed if not 

 annihilated, scotched if not slain." And the result has been the same 

 in this conflict as in all the others ; and now, when the theory of Mr- 

 Darwin has been all but proved, many of those who were originally its 

 opponents have become its staunch advocates. 



It is needless to go into an account of the theoiy of the " Origin of 

 Species." It is well enough known to science, though, perhaps, im- 

 perfectly so to its opponents generally. There can be but little doubt 

 but that the publication of this book marks an epoch in the history of 

 the human intellect. It came at a time when the world was ripe for 

 it, and when the slightest impetus drove it onward and upward with a 

 force which is gathering strength day by da}\ Now, but twenty-three 

 years after the first public announcement of the theory, it receives the 

 avowed sanction of nearly every scientific man in the world, and of 

 thousands who know of science but by hearsay. It has been translated 

 into the French, German, Dutch, Italian, Russian and Japanese lan- 

 guages. It is a triumph which has been achieved by no other book which 

 has appeared in this century. It has effected such a change in 

 thought, it has given such an impetus to scientific investigation, that 



