A firm believer in evolution, Huxley was, as Professor Poulton says, confronted by two difficulties,—first, the insufficiency of the evidence of evolution, and, secondly, the absence of any explanation of how the phenomenon had occurred. The _Origin of Species_ solved both these difficulties. It adduced much weighty evidence in favour of evolution, and suggested a _modus operandi_. Small wonder, then, that Huxley became a champion of Darwinism. But, as Poulton writes, on page 202 of _Essays on Evolution_, “while natural selection thus enabled Huxley freely to accept evolution, he was by no means fully satisfied with it.” “He never committed himself to a full belief in natural selection, and even contemplated the possibility of its ultimate disappearance.” To use Huxley’s own words: “Whether the particular shape which the doctrine of evolution, as applied to the organic world, took in Darwin’s hands, would prove to be final or not, was, to me, a matter of indifference.” The result of the fortuitous combination of the circumstances which we have set forth was that in a surprisingly short time the theory of natural selection came to be regarded as a law of nature on a par with the laws of gravitation. Thus, paradoxical though it seems, practical certainty was given to a hitherto uncertain doctrine by the addition of a still more uncertain theory. “At once,” writes Waggett, “the theory of development leapt from the position of an obscure guess to that of a fully-equipped theory and almost a certainty.” Darwin thus became a dictator whose authority none durst question. A crowd of slavish adherents gathered round him, a herd of men to whom he seemed an absolutely unquestionable authority. Darwinism became a creed to which all must subscribe. It still retains this position in the popular mind. Growing Opposition to Darwinism