Wherefore, in Galileos time, we might have helped to proscribe, or to
burn--had he been stubborn enough to warrant cremation--even the great
pioneer of inductive research; although, when we had fairly recovered
our composure, and bad leisurely excogitated the matter, we might have
come to conclude that the new doctrine was better than the old one,
after all, at least for those who had nothing to unlearn.
Such being our habitual state of mind, it may well be believed that the
perusal of the new book "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection" left an uncomfortable impression, in spite of its plausible
and winning ways. We were not wholly unprepared for it, as many of our
contemporaries seem to have been. The scientific reading in which we
indulge as a relaxation from severer studies had raised dim
forebodings. Investigations about the succession of species in time,
and their actual geographical distribution over the earths surface,
were leading up from all sides and in various ways to the question of
their origin. Now and then we encountered a sentence, like Prof. Owens
"axiom of the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living
things," which haunted us like an apparition. For, dim as our
conception must needs be as to what such oracular and grandiloquent
phrases might really mean, we felt confident that they presaged no good
to old beliefs.
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