Goethe sent him to Spinoza, a "God-intoxicated man," and a philosophical genius, but not a pillar of ecclesiastical orthodoxy.

Vestiges of Creation, which had appeared in 1844, woke Oxford to the discovery that physical science might have something to say about the origin, or at least the growth, of the universe.

The writer, Robert Chambers, whose name was not then known, so far anticipated Darwin that he dispensed with the necessity for a special creation of each plant and animal.

He did not, any more than Darwin, attack the Christian religion, and he did not really go much farther than Lucretius.

But he had more modern lights, he understood science, and he wrote in a popular style.