This paper is not a discussion of variations lying within the boundaries of heredity; nor do we remember that the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures reveal anything on that subject; nor do we think that it can be rationally discussed until species and genus are defined.
Failure to condition spontaneous generation by sterilized hay tea, and a chronic inability to discover the missing link, have shaken the popularity of Darwinism. Will it recover? Or is it falling into a fixed condition of innocuous desuetude?
As a purely academic question, who cares whether a protoplastic cell, or an amoeba, or an ascidian larva, was his primordial progenitor? It does not grip us. It is doubtful whether any purely academic question ever grips anybody. But the issue between Darwinism and mankind is not a purely academic question.
Half his life Charles Darwin was afraid of the reproaches of Christians. It was something like the fear felt by another Charles, of the reproaches of the Huguenots were he to consent to the assassination of Coligny. He refers to it in the "Introduction to the Descent of Man":
"During many years I collected notes on the origin and descent of man, without any intention of publishing on the subject, but rather with the determination not to publish; as I thought that I should thus add to the prejudices against my views."
At the end of the book he says: "I am aware that the conclusions arrived at in this work will be denominated by some as highly irreligious; but he who denounces them is bound to show why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct species by descent from some lowly form, through the laws of variation and natural selection, than to explain the birth of the individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction."
He confessed his fear by protesting his innocence: "I have done nothing
