VII 
THE ANTIQUITY AND ORIGIN OF MAN 
419 
But the question of the mere “ Antiquity of Man ” 
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 opposi- 
tion 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 philo- 
sophy 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, practically, 
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 independent origin of man held 
its ground somewhat longer; but the publication of Mr. 
Darwin’s great work gave even that its deathblow, 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 believe that his mind, and even some of his 
physical characteristics, may be due to the action of other 
forces than have acted in the case of the lower animals. 
We need hardly be surprised, under these circumstances, 
if there has been a tendency among men of science to pass 
from one extreme to the other; from a profession (so few 
years ago) of total ignorance as to the mode of origin of all 
living things, to a claim to almost complete knowledge of the 
whole progress of the universe, from the first speck of living 
