opinion leaves me in doubt as to its substance. I do not
understand how a hostile criticism can, under any circumstances,
tend to confirm that which it attacks. If, however, Mr.
Gladstone merely means to express his personal impression, "as
one wholly destitute of that kind of knowledge which carries
authority," that he has destroyed the value of these criticisms,
I have neither the wish nor the right to attempt to disturb his
faith. On the other hand, I may be permitted to state my own
conviction, that, so far as natural science is involved,
M. Reville's observations retain the exact value they possessed
before Mr. Gladstone attacked them.


Trusting that I have now said enough to secure the author of a
wise and moderate disquisition upon a topic which seems fated to
stir unwisdom and fanaticism to their depths, a fuller measure
of justice than has hitherto been accorded to him, I retire from
my self-appointed championship, with the hope that I shall not
hereafter be called upon by M. Reville to apologise for damage
done to his strong case by imperfect or impulsive advocacy.
But, perhaps, I may be permitted to add a word or two, on my own
account, in reference to the great question of the relations
between science and religion; since it is one about which I have
thought a good deal ever since I have been able to think at all;
and about which I have ventured to express my views publicly,
more than once, in the course of the last thirty years.

The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear
so much, appears to me to be purely factitious--fabricated, on
the one hand, by short-sighted religious people who confound a