shared their fate, but, even at this day, are regarded by nine-tenths of
the civilised world as the authoritative standard of fact and the criterion
of the justice of scientific conclusions, in all that relates to the origin
of things, and, among them, of species. In this nineteenth century, as at
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 harmonise 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