the dawn of modern physical science, the cosmogony of the
semi-barbarous Hebrew is the incubus of the philosopher and the
opprobrium of the orthodox. Who shall number the patient and earnest
seekers after truth, from the days of Galileo until now, whose lives
have been embittered and their good name blasted by the mistaken zeal
of Bibliolaters? Who shall count the host of weaker men whose sense of
truth has been destroyed in the effort to harmonize
impossibilities--whose life has been wasted in the attempt to force the
generous new wine of Science into the old bottles of Judaism, compelled
by the outcry of the same strong party?

It is true that if philosophers have suffered, their cause has been
amply avenged. Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every
science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history
records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed,
the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and
crushed if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain. But orthodoxy is
the Bourbon of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it
forget; and though, at present, bewildered and afraid to move, it is as
willing as ever to insist that the first chapter of Genesis contains
the beginning and the end of sound science; and to visit, with such
petty thunderbolts as its half-paralysed hands can hurl, those who
refuse to degrade Nature to the level of primitive Judaism.

Philosophers, on the other hand, have no such aggressive tendencies.
With eyes fixed on the noble goal to which "per aspera et ardua" they
tend, they may, now and then, be stirred to momentary wrath by the
unnecessary obstacles with which the ignorant, or the malicious,
encumber, if they cannot bar, the difficult path; but why should their
souls be deeply vexed? The majesty of Fact is on their side, and the