



Produced by Sue Asscher.  HTML version by Al Haines.









ON THE RECEPTION OF THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES'


by

PROFESSOR THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY



FROM THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF CHARLES DARWIN

EDITED BY FRANCIS DARWIN



ON THE RECEPTION OF THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.'

To the present generation, that is to say, the people a few years on
the hither and thither side of thirty, the name of Charles Darwin
stands alongside of those of Isaac Newton and Michael Faraday; and,
like them, calls up the grand ideal of a searcher after truth and
interpreter of Nature.  They think of him who bore it as a rare
combination of genius, industry, and unswerving veracity, who earned
his place among the most famous men of the age by sheer native power,
in the teeth of a gale of popular prejudice, and uncheered by a sign of
favour or appreciation from the official fountains of honour; as one
who in spite of an acute sensitiveness to praise and blame, and
notwithstanding provocations which might have excused any outbreak,
kept himself clear of all envy, hatred, and malice, nor dealt otherwise
than fairly and justly with the unfairness and injustice which was
showered upon him; while, to the end of his days, he was ready to
listen with patience and respect to the most insignificant of
reasonable objectors.

And with respect to that theory of the origin of the forms of life
peopling our globe, with which Darwin's name is bound up as closely as
that of Newton with the theory of gravitation, nothing seems to be
further from the mind of the present generation than any attempt to
smother it with ridicule or to crush it by vehemence of denunciation.
"The struggle for existence," and "Natural selection," have become
household words and every-day conceptions.  The reality and the
importance of the natural processes on which Darwin founds his
deductions are no more doubted than those of growth and multiplication;
and, whether the full potency attributed to them is admitted or not, no
one doubts their vast and far-reaching significance.  Wherever the
biological sciences are studied, the 'Origin of Species' lights the
paths of the investigator; wherever they are taught it permeates the
course of instruction.  Nor has the influence of Darwinian ideas been
less profound, beyond the realms of Biology. The oldest of all
philosophies, that of Evolution, was bound hand and foot and cast into
utter darkness during the millennium of theological scholasticism.  But
Darwin poured new life-blood into the ancient frame; the bonds burst,
and the revivified thought of ancient Greece has proved itself to be a
more adequate expression of the universal order of things than any of
the schemes which have been accepted by the credulity and welcomed by
the superstition of seventy later generations of men.

To any one who studies the signs of the times, the emergence of the
philosophy of Evolution, in the attitude of claimant to the throne of
the world of thought, from the limbo of hated and, as many hoped,
forgotten things, is the most portentous event of the nineteenth
century.  But the most effective weapons of the modern champions of
Evolution were fabricated by Darwin; and the 'Origin of Species' has
enlisted a formidable body of combatants, trained in the severe school
of Physical Science, whose ears might have long remained deaf to the
speculations of a priori philosophers.

I do not think any candid or instructed person will deny the truth of
that which has just been asserted.  He may hate the very name of
Evolution, and may deny its pretensions as vehemently as a Jacobite
denied those of George the Second.  But there it is--not only as
solidly seated as the Hanoverian dynasty, but happily independent of
Parliamentary sanction--and the dullest antagonists have come to see
that they have to deal with an adversary whose bones are to be broken
by no amount of bad words.

Even the theologians have almost ceased to pit the plain meaning of
Genesis against the no less plain meaning of Nature.  Their more
candid, or more cautious, representatives have given up dealing with
Evolution as if it were a damnable heresy, and have taken refuge in one
of two courses.  Either they deny that Genesis was meant to teach
scientific truth, and thus save the veracity of the record at the
expense of its authority; or they expend their energies in devising the
cruel ingenuities of the reconciler, and torture texts in the vain hope
of making them confess the creed of Science.  But when the peine forte
et dure is over, the antique sincerity of the venerable sufferer always
reasserts itself.  Genesis is honest to the core, and professes to be