But the merely material relation of support and assistance was a small affair compared to the profound affection which Darwin seemed peculiarly calculated to convey and inspire. The note of this affection sounds through all his correspondence and gives it a more winning quality than almost anything else. How deep and strong was his friends’ regard for him is nicely indicated in the passage in which Huxley analyzes the bearing of it upon his work and success: ‘I cannot agree with you, again, that the acceptance of Darwin’s views was in any way influenced by the strong affection entertained for him by many of his friends. What the affection really did was to lead those of his friends who had seen good reason for his views to take much more trouble in his defense and support and to strike out much harder at his adversary than they would otherwise have done. This is pardonable, if not justifiable—that which you suggest would to my mind be neither.’[232] As for Darwin’s own feeling, I know nothing that brings it home more vividly, when one considers his zeal for his work and for success with it, than the passage in which he declares such success and everything else to be trash beside love: “Talk of fame, honor, pleasure, wealth, all are dirt compared with affection; and this is a doctrine which, I know, from your letter, that you will agree with from the bottom of your heart.’[233] After which I think we may conclude generally that few human beings have been more endowed than Charles Darwin with tenderness and sympathy for all created things.’ CHAPTER VI DARWIN: THE DESTROYER I In studying the influence of Darwin and Darwinism, it is well to begin by realizing clearly the crude orthodox religious conceptions which prevailed with the mass of mankind through the Middle Ages and well into the nineteenth century, as they prevail still in some form among large portions of the population in Europe and America. According to these conceptions the universe was created by an omnipotent, thoroughly anthropomorphic Deity. In that universe the terrestrial globe occupied a most important, if not a central and pivotal position. The globe was peopled by living beings, each created by the Deity in its particular form and kind, and all, like the whole existing universe, subordinated to man, who alone was endowed with a reasoning intellect and a moral nature. Thus gifted, he was an object of peculiar solicitude to his Creator, who interfered in every aspect of human fate, and whose favor could be secured and his wrath deprecated by prayer and by the conformity of human conduct to the divine decrees. In other words, the earth was the primary object of the universe, and man was the primary object of the earth, and hence of the universe also.