WHAT CARLYLE THOUGHT OF DARWINISM.

Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, Volume 4, Issue 201, 11 June 1881, Page 3

WHAT CARLYLE THOUGHT OF DARWINISM.

The late Thomas Carlyle writing' in 1877 on Darwinism, made use of the following striking language:— " I have known three generations of the Darwins, grandfather, father, and son; atheists all. The brother of the present famous naturalist, ;i ipiiet man who lives not far from here, fold me that among his grandfather's effects he found a seal engraven with this legend —" Omnia ex eonc/iin ;" everything from a clam-shell ! I saw the naturalist, not many months ago; told him that I had read Ilia "Origin of the Species" and other hooks; that he had by no means satisfied me that men were descended from monkeys, but had gone far toward persuading mi! that he and his so-called scientific brethren had brought the present generation of Englishmen verv near to monkeys.

'• A good sou uf a mnn is this Darwin, :itid well-meaning, but with very little intellect. Ah, it's a sad a terrible thing to scf nigh a whole generation of mini iiml women professing to l>o cultivated, looking around in n purblind fashion, and finding no God in this universe. ] suppose it is a reaction from tlio reign ol'cant and hollow pretence,professing to believe, what in flict they do not believe. And this is what we have gut to. All things from frog spawn'; and the gospel of dirt the order of the day. The older I grow—nnd I now stand upon the brink of the eternity—the more comes back to mo the sentence in the catechism, which I learned when a child, and the fuller and the deeper it meaning becomes :—' What is the chief end of man ?' 'To glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.' No gospel of dirt, teaching that men have decended from frogs through monkeys can ever set that aside."