“Perhaps the most remarkable movement in philosophic thought that has occurred in any age was the rise and general acceptance by scientific circles of the evolutionary theory as propounded by Darwin, Huxley and Spencer. It was remarkable that men of science, whose peculiar boast it is that they deal only with established facts, should have so readily departed from this rule and accepted a system based upon hypothesis only, and which was, and is still after the lapse of forty years, without a single known fact to support it. Even when allowance is made for the well-known eagerness of many scientists to do away with all dualism, which was Mr. Darwin’s aim, it was still remarkable that men of trained intellect should have so promptly accepted at face value his two principal works, in which the expression, ‘We may well suppose,’ occurs over eight hundred times, as a basis for the argument.”
