relieved, the thoughts of many of
the most sensitive minds in regard to Theism were held in suspense.
The shadow of misgiving was felt to be creeping over the mind of the
age, like the gloom of an approaching eclipse, even before the arrival
of the Darwinian hypothesis. In words too well known to need
repeating, Tennyson had given utterance to the half-realised anxiety of
his contemporaries in the stanzas of his _In Memoriam_, published in
1850.

What the finer spirits were already beginning to feel was soon to be
proclaimed, in terms which could not fail to be understood by the
multitude, as an inevitable truth brought to light by scientific
enquiry. We have seen how it was stated with the passion of eloquence
by Huxley and Romanes. And Darwin, with all his detachment and
philosophic calm, was at times deeply affected by the seriousness of
the problem which he had done so much to bring into prominence. It is
plain that he did his very utmost to retain the hopeful view, and to
put the most consoling interpretation he could upon the disquieting
facts.

He had no difficulty in shewing that the wholesale destruction of
living organisms was imperatively {55} necessary. "There is no
exception to the rule," he said, "that every organic being naturally
increases at so high a rate that, if not destroyed, the earth would
soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair."[1]

The truth of this has been demonstrated again and again. A pair of
rabbits, for example, would in the most favourable circumstances
increase in four or five years to a million. The roe of a cod may
contain eight or nine millions of eggs. More appalling still, the
female of the common flesh fly will at one time deposit 20,000 eggs.
At this rate of increase it has been calculated that, in less than a
year, a single pair would produce enough flies, if these were not
devoured by their natural foes, to cover the whole surface of the globe
to the depth of a mile and a quarter! But all this does not, of
course, make it clear why in a beneficently ordered world such a
necessity of slaughter should ever have been allowed to arise.

Darwin, as we have said, tried hard to take the most favourable view of
the whole process. He thus concluded his chapter on the struggle for
existence; "When we reflect on the struggle, we may console ourselves
with the full belief that {56} the war of nature is not incessant, that
no fear is felt, that death is generally pro