Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/643

 Europe of To-day 605 reception, a generation or so ago, of Darwin's remark- able investigations. Darwin's Origin of Species had come into the theological world like a plow into an ant-hill. Everywhere those thus rudely awakened from their old comfort and repose had swarmed forth angry and confused. Reviews, sermons, books light and heavy, came flying at the new thinker from all sides. . . . One distinguished clerical reviewer, in spite of Darwin's thirty years of quiet labor, and in spite of the powerful summing up of his book, prefaced a diatribe by saying that Darwin " might have been more modest had he given some slight reason for dissenting from the views gener- ally entertained." Another distinguished clergyman, vice president of a Protestant institute to combat " dangerous " science, declared Darwinism " an attempt to dethrone God." Another critic spoke of persons accepting the Dar- winian views as " under the frenzied inspiration of the inhaler of mephitic gas," and of Darwin's argument as "a jungle of fanciful assumption." Another spoke of Darwin's views as suggesting that "God is dead," and declared that Darwin's work " does open violence to everything which the Creator himself has told us in the Scriptures of the methods and results of his work." . . . In France the attack was even more violent. [A French prelate wrote :] "These infamous doctrines have for their only support the most abject passions. Their father is pride, their mother impurity, their offspring revolutions ; they come from hell and return thither, taking with them the gross creatures who blush not to proclaim and accept them." . . . [Pope Pius IX, acknowledging the gift of a supposed refutation of Darwin's theory of evolution, said:] "A sys- tem which is repugnant at once to history, to the traditions of all peoples, to exact science, to observed facts, and even to reason herself, would seem to need no refutation, did not alienation from God and the leaning toward material- ism due to depravity eagerly seek a support in all this 495. How Darwin's works were received by conservative persons. (From Andrew D. White's Warfare of Science and Theology.) *