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Updated: April 30, 2025
Of course the Darwinians who spoke thus, did not intend to injure the moral principle, but only to purify and reform it; and therefore we shall have to speak of them in the following section. The Materialists and Monists. Darwin and the English Utilitarians. Gustav Jäger. Among those who ascribe to Darwinism a morally reforming influence, we have to mention in the first place the materialists.
To take one other example: there is nothing which was more insisted upon by Darwinians than the fact that all the various races of domestic fowl known to us came from Gallus bankiva, the jungle-fowl of India; in fact I think I have seen that form enthroned amongst its supposed descendants in more than one museum.
The history of science well exemplified by that of the development theory is the history of eminent men who have fought against light and have been worsted. The tenacity with which Darwinians stick to their accumulation of fortuitous variations is on a par with the like tenacity shown by the illustrious Cuvier, who did his best to crush evolution altogether.
Amongst the evolutionists whom I have known there have been several who did not accept without modification the theory of natural selection, and supplemented it by design, amongst whom I may mention the great American botanist, Asa Gray, one of the most distinguished of Darwinians, who accepted the method of evolution as the modus operandi of the Supreme Intelligence.
Nevertheless, such friendly voices are not entirely wanting in our country. The botanist Alex Braun says, in his beautiful and significant lecture on the importance of development in natural history, p. 48: "Some said that the descent theory denies creation, and it is true, the Darwinians themselves caused this opinion by contrasting creation and development as irreconcilable ideas.
Darwin's statement that it has probably "been the main agent in rendering organs rudimentary," no limits are assignable to the accumulated effects of habit, provided the effects of habit, or use and disuse, are supposed, as Mr. Darwin supposed them, to be inheritable at all. Darwinians have at length woke up to the dilemma in which they are placed by the manner in which Mr.
Mr. Allen says: "At the same time it must be steadily remembered that there are many naturalists at the present day, especially among those of the lower order of intelligence, who, while accepting evolutionism in a general way, and therefore always describing themselves as Darwinians, do not believe, and often cannot even understand, the distinctive Darwinian addition to the evolutionary doctrine namely, the principle of natural selection.
Take, as an instance of its truth, the influence of industrialism upon ideas. It is industrialism, rather than the arguments of Darwinians and Biblical critics, that has led to the decay of religious belief in the urban working class. At the same time, industrialism has revived religious belief among the rich.
And we may also be brief for another reason, namely, that by reviewing the position of the Darwinians in reference to the religious question, we have essentially prepared the way for the principal questions which will have to be treated.
We can treat much more briefly of this portion of our task than of the position of the Darwinians in reference to the religious question, for the reason that the contrasts in the ethical realm are far less sharply drawn than in the religious realm, although in principle they are not less widely apart.
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