And, on the other hand, if the blind acceptance of authority appears to him in its true colours, as mere private judgment in excelsis, and if he have 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. Darwin can be said to have established: