1884.] 
An Exegesis of Darwinism. 
73i 
thoughts were irradiated as by a central fire.” A similar 
inference, however, is unwarrantable respecting the Bacon 
quotation. When we take the recommendation to obtain 
proficience in “the book of God’s word . . . divinity” in 
conjunction with the implication that the impression that 
the doCtrines of the “ Origin of Species ” would be subversive 
of revealed religion would be transient, and that this 
transiency was a matter for satisfaction (pp. 421, 422), we 
can comprehend why the Quarterly Reviewer should affirm 
that “ Mr. Darwin writes as a Christian, and we doubt not 
that he is one.” 
In the study of his home at Down during the afternoon 
of Wednesday, the 28th day of September, 281 years 
after Bruno was burned, Charles Darwin, in the presence of 
Dr. Ludwig Buchner, Dr. Edward Aveling, and Dr. Francis 
Darwin, declared that he had given up Christianity when 
forty years of age. Visitors to Westminster Abbey may 
ascertain that Mr. Darwin’s fortieth birthday anniversary 
was a decade anterior to 1859. The Bacon and Leibnitz 
quotations being, therefore, calculated to mislead ; we may 
not, I think, consider that Mr. Darwin “ postulated ” theism 
on the strength of the Whewell and Butler quotations. 
Was he, then, Theist by induction ? In answering this 
question in the negative I may refer to his repeated com- 
ments on the supplanting of indigenes by intruders, though 
the former “ are commonly looked at as specially created 
and adapted for their own country” (p. 89) ; to his quota- 
tion of “the remarkable words of Helmholtz, whose judg- 
ment no one will dispute,” concerning the imperfection of 
the human eye; to his exclamation, “can we consider the 
sting of the bee as perfect ?” “ can we admire the produc- 
tion, for [a] single purpose, of thousands of drones, which 
are utterly useless to the community for any other purpose ?” 
or the elaboration of dense clouds of pollen by our fir trees, 
so that a few granules might be wafted on to the ovules 
(pp. 163, 164) ; to his remark that “ To grant to species the 
special power of producing hybrids, and then to stop their 
further propagation by different degrees of sterility, not 
strictly related to the facility of the first union between the 
parents, seems a strange arrangement ” (p. 245) ; to similar 
remarks as to prepotence in reciprocal crosses (p. 247) ; to 
his remark that Nature betrays what in mechanical inven- 
tion would be “ the blunders of numerous workmen ” (p.426), 
&c. (pp. 154, 104), as well as to chapters xii., xiii., and xiv. 
passim. Also to a series of quotations of another category 
touching a blacker matter than want of wisdom : to his 
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