What Darwin Really Said

INTRODUCTION
 
 
Charles Darwin, the author, among many other books, of The Origen of Species (1859) and of The Descent of Man (1871), was the central figure in a great revolution of thought which was taking place about a hundred years ago. At that time it was commonly believed that the world was only about 6,000 years old; that it had been created by God about 4,000 B.C. as a concern; and that now, about 6,000 years later, it was still much the same as He had left it when He rested from his six days’ work.
 
A contrary opinion had been held by some thinkers in antiquity and was now being revived with much fresh argument. This was, that the world was much more than 6,000 years old; and that the world and all the creatures on it had undergone many great changes and would undergo more. The world, in short, was not simply a going concern, but a growing concern. Moreover, it was claimed, science has begun to arrange in order the various stages of development and to determine the laws of its growth.
 
This theory of evolution rather than a once-for-all act of creation had been in the air for some time before Charles Darwin wrote. His own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was one of its most ardent and persuasive advocates. But the majority of educated men, not only churchmen but scientists, were against the idea until Charles Darwin formulated the theory in a new way and supported it with a mass of evidence which won it general acceptance.
 
The extent of the opposition by churchmen created the image of a clash between religion and science which has left its mark on our history. It is not forgotten how Bishop Wilberforce at a meeting of the British Association in 1860 asked indignantly whether a man who accepted an ape for his grandfather must also accept an ape for grandmother. Thomas Huxley caustically replied that for his part he would rather be descended from a humble monkey than from a man who employed his eloquence misrepresenting earnest men who were wearing out their lives in the search for the truth. But there were open-minded men in the Church as well as outside it. In the same year the New Testament scholar Hort wrote to his friend Westcott: “Have you read Darwin? . . . I am inclined to think it unanswerable. In any case it’s a treat to read such a book.” Other churchmen too were soon “thanking God that the scientific men have shattered the idol of an infallible book.”
 
Part of our business, then, will be to set forth the evidence advanced by Darwin which shattered the creationist views taught by the Church on the basis of the first two chapter of Genesis. Also we shall have to glance at what Darwin did not know. For so rapid has been the advance of knowledge that for the modern evolutionist much of what Darwin wrote is irredeemably out-of-date. Also, like everybody else, he had his blind spots.