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1 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



nessecl the final emancipation of the mind. I do not see that Darwin's 

 supreme service to his fellow men was his demonstration of evolution — 

 man could have lived on quite as happily and perhaps more morally 

 under the old notion that he was specially made in the image of his 

 maker. Darwin's supreme service was that he won for man absolute 

 freedom in the study of the laws of nature; he literally fulfilled the 

 saying of St. John, " Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall 

 make you free." 



When we look back upon the very recent years of 1858-59, the 

 years of revoliition, we see that we were far from free either to- study 

 nature or reason about it. Our intellectual chains were from the 

 forges of theology both catholic and protestant. The Bible was read 

 as a revelation of physical law rather than as an epic of righteousness 

 and spiritual laAV. Theology while in power was itself in a most 

 critical position, in a cid-de-sac of antagonism to reason and common 

 sense, and this despite the warnings of Augustine and of Bacon. As 

 early as the fifth century the wise theologian of Numidia had said : 



Leave questions of the earth and the sky and the other elements of this 

 world to reasoning and observation. Perceiving that you are as far from the 

 truth as the east from the west the man of science will scarce restrain his 

 laughter. 



Similarly, the great founder of the inductive method observed: 



Do not excite the laughter of men of science through an absurd mixture 

 of matters human and divine. Do not commit the consummate folly of 

 building a system of natural philosophy on the first chapter of Genesis or on 

 the Book of Job. 



It is difficult for the college student in this day of libert}'', if not 

 of license, to realize that, in the words of Lowell: 



We breathe cheaply in the common air thoughts that great hearts once 

 broke for. 



When, in 1844, Darwin communicated to the botanist Hooker 

 under promise of secrecy his outline of evolution, he well knew the 

 opprobrium it would bring, for he subsequently added (1846) : 



When my notes are published I shall fall infinitely low in the opinion 

 of all sound naturalists, so this is my prospect for the future. 



From the borders of Poland in 1543, or just three centuries 

 earlier, Copernicus had published his " Eevolutions of the Heavenly 

 Bodies," and thus fired the first shot in a three-hundred-years war for 

 freedom to observe nature. In 1611 the telescope of Galileo demon- 

 strated the truth of the Copernican law that the earth moves around 

 the sun; and the most impressive object to-day in Florence is the 

 model of the finger of this great astronomer as he held it up before 

 the examiners of the inquisition, with the words, " It still moves." 



As time advanced the prison gave way to the milder but effective 



