The terrible implication is drawn that Darwin’s unexpressed supposition was that “man” might be only “an improved ape.” (Wilberforce on this point was not far from the mark; this is close to what Darwin thought.) That natural selection might apply to humans is denounced as “absolutely incompatible” with “the Word of God.” Moreover, “man’s derived supremacy over the earth; man’s power of articulate speech; man’s gift of reason; man’s free-will and responsibility; man’s fall and man’s redemption; the Incarnation of the Eternal Son; the indwelling of the Eternal Spirit, all are equally and utterly irreconcilable with the degrading notion of the brute origin of him who was created in the image of God, and redeemed by the Eternal Son.” The idea of evolution tends “inevitably to banish from the mind most of the peculiar attributes of the Almighty.” Darwin’s insights are compared to “the frenzied inspiration of the inhaler of mephitic gas.” His views are contrasted by Bishop Wilberforce with those of “a far greater philosopher,” Professor Owen, whom he quotes, a little tangentially, as advising teenagers:Oh! you who possess it in all the supple vigour of lusty youth, think well what it is that He has committed to your keeping. Waste not its energies; cull them not by sloth; spoil them not by pleasures! The supreme work of creation has been accomplished that you might possess a body—the sole erect—of all animal bodies the most free—and for what? for the service of the soul . . Defile it not.10
The process of natural selection, extracting order out of chaos as if by magic, was counterintuitive and disturbing to many, and Darwin was repeatedly accused of something not far short of idolatry. He answered the charge in these words:It has been said that I speak of natural selection as an active power or Deity; but who objects to an author speaking of the attraction of gravity as ruling the movements of the planets? Every one knows what is meant and is implied by such metaphorical expressions; and they are almost necessary for brevity. So again it is difficult to avoid personifying the word Nature; but I mean by Nature, only the aggregate action and product of many natural laws, and by laws the sequence of events as ascertained by us. With a little familiarity such superficial objections will be forgotten …As man can produce, and certainly has produced, a great result by his methodical and unconscious means of selection, what may not natural selection effect? Man can act only on external and visible characters: Nature, if I may be allowed to personify the natural preservation or survival of the fittest, cares nothing for appearances, except in so far as they are useful to any being. She can act on every internal organ, on every shade of constitutional difference, on the whole machinery of life. Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends …It may metaphorically be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good; silently and insensibly working … We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the lapse of ages, and then so imperfect is our view into long-past geological ages, that we see only that the forms of life are now different from what they formerly were.