the courage to stand alone, face to face with the abyss
of the Eternal and Unknowable, let him be content, once for all, not
only to renounce the good things promised by "Infallibility," but even
to bear the bad things which it prophesies; content to follow reason
and fact in singleness and honesty of purpose, wherever they may lead,
in the sure faith that a hell of honest men will, to him, be more
endurable than a paradise full of angelic shams.

Mr. Mivart asserts that "without a belief in a personal God, there is
no religion worthy of the name." This is a matter of opinion. But
it may be asserted, with less reason to fear contradiction, that the
worship of a personal God, who, on Mr. Mivart's hypothesis, must
have used language studiously calculated to deceive His creatures and
worshippers, is "no religion worthy of the name." "Incredibile est,
Deum illis verbis ad populum fuisse locutum quibus deciperetur," is a
verdict in which, for once, Jesuit casuistry concurs with the healthy
moral sense of all mankind.

Having happily got quit of the theological aspect of evolution, the
supporter of that great truth who turns to the scientific objections
which are brought against it by recent criticism, finds, to his
relief, that the work before him is greatly lightened by the
spontaneous retreat of the enemy from nine-tenths of the territory
which he occupied ten years ago. Even the Quarterly Reviewer not only
abstains from venturing to deny that evolution has taken place, but he
openly admits that Mr. Darwin has forced on men's minds "a recognition
of the probability, if not more, of evolution, and of the certainty of
the action of natural selection" (p. 49).

I do not quite see, myself, how, if the action of natural selection is
_certain_, the occurrence of evolution is only _probable_; inasmuch as
the development of a new species by natural selection is, so far as
it goes, evolution. However, it is not worth while to quarrel with
the precise terms of a sentence which shows that the high watermark of
intelligence among those most respectable of Britons, the readers of
the _Quarterly Review_, has now reached such a level that the next
tide may lift them easily and pleasantly on the once-dreaded shore of
evolution. Nor, having got there, do they seem likely to stop, until
they have reached the inmost heart of that great region, and accepted
the ape ancestry of, at any rate, the body of man. For the Reviewer
admits that Mr