e minds of some and not of others. The new movement for an
inclusive science is not hostile to religion. Yet it will transform
current conceptions of religion as those others never did. In proportion
as it is scientific, it cannot be hostile. It may at most be
indifferent. Nevertheless, in the long run, few will choose the theme of
religion for the scientific labour of life who have not some interest in
religion. Men of these three classes have accepted the doctrine of
evolution. Comte thought he had discovered it. Spencer and those for
whom we have taken him as type, did service in the elaboration of it. To
the men of our third group, the truth of evolution seems no longer
debatable. Here too, in the word 'evolution,' we have a term which has
been used with laxity. It corresponds to a notion which has only
gradually been evolved. Its implications were at first by no means
understood. It was associated with a mechanical view of the universe
which was diametrically opposed to its truth. Still, there could not be
a doubt that the doctrine contravened those ideas as to the origin of
the world, and more particularly of man, of the relations of species,
and especially of the human species to other forms of animal life, which
had immemorially prevailed in Christian circles and which had the
witness of the Scriptures on their behalf. If we were to attempt, with
acknowledged latitude, to name a book whose import might be said to be
cardinal for the whole movement treated of in this chapter, that book
would be Darwin's _Origin of Species_, which was published in 1859.

Long before Darwin the creation legend had been recognised as such. The
astronomy of the seventeenth century had removed the earth from its
central position. The geology of the eighteenth had shown how long must
have been the ages of the laying down of the earth's strata. The
question of the descent of man, however, brought home the significance
of evolution for religion more forcibly than any other aspect of the
debate had done. There were scientific men of distinction who were not
convinced of the truth of the evolutionary hypothesis. To most Christian
men the theory seemed to leave no unique distinction or spiritual
quality for man. It seemed to render impossible faith in the Scriptures
as revelation. To many it seemed that the whole issue as between a
spiritual and a purely materialistic view of the universe was involved.
Particularly was this true of the Engli