Carlyle on Darwin

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 17, 1878

Carlyle on Darwin.

A “PERFECTLY trustworthy” London correspondent in a letter to the Hartford Courant describes an interview with Thomas Carlyle, now in his eighty-first year, and occupying a small sunny house in that city. The old man's head is massive and grand, covered with abundant gray hair. His eye lights up his long face, and almost transfigures his whole countenance. His conversation is full of soul, sometimes of fiery energy and eloquence. The correspondent gives the following as a specimen:—

“About thirty years ago, a book was published here called the ‘Vestiges of Creation.’ It ran quietly through five editions: men read it with bated breath, in silence, and marveled at its audacity. It was like a pinch of snuff, and now whole wagon loads of it are thrown down in the public highways, and atheistic sneezing has become the fashion. So-called literary and scientific classes in England now proudly give themselves to protoplasm, origin of species, and the like, to prove that God did not build the universe. I have known three generations of the Darwins—grandfather, father, and son—atheists all. The brother of the present famous naturalist, a quiet man who lives not far from here, told me that among his grandfather’s effects he found a seal engraved with this motto, ‘omnia ex conchis,’ everything from a clam shell! I saw the naturalist not many months ago; told him that I had read his ‘Origin of the Species’ and other books; that he had by no means satisfied me that men were descended from monkeys, but had done much toward persuading me that he and his so-called scientific brethren had brought the present generation of Englishmen very near to monkeys.”

“A good sort of a man is this Darwin, and well-meaning, but with very little intellect. Ah, it is a sad and terrible thing to see nearly a whole generation of men and women professing to be cultivated, looking around in a purblind fashion, and finding no God in this universe. I suppose it is a reaction from the reign of cant and hollow pretence, professing to believe what in fact they do not believe. And this is what we have got to: all things from frog spawn; the gospel of dirt the order of the day. The older I grow—and I now stand upon the brink of eternity—the more comes back to me the sentence in the catechism, which I learned when a child, and the fuller and deeper its meaning becomes,—‘What is the great end of man?’ ‘To glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.’ No gospel of dirt, teaching that men have descended from frogs through monkeys, can ever set that aside.”