DARWIN AND HAECKEL. 



595 



by the Cuvierian classification, and insisted upon by bis followers, to 

 the great satisfaction of the opponents of the doctrine of evolution, 

 really had an existence in Nature. I came to the conclusion that it 

 had none ; I stated the grounds of these conclusions to those who at- 

 tended my lectures in 1859-'60 ; a battle, which was somewhat no- 

 torious in its day, took place at the meeting of the British Association 

 at Oxford in 1860, and turned upon Mr. Darwin's views of the evolu- 

 tion of man; while, in 1863, I summed up the then state of the ques- 

 tion in a little booh, entitled " Man's Place in Nature," which did its 

 work in several languages beside my own, and is now out of print and 

 gone to the limbo of forgotten things : which is its proper place, now 

 that Mr. Darwin has had leisure to state his own views more fully, 

 though not more distinctly, than in the " Origin of Species," in the 

 " Descent of Man." 



Mr. Darwin reticent about his views respecting the origiu of man ! 

 Why, for years after the publication of the "Origin of Species," one 

 could not go to a dinner-party without hearing them ; and, whether 

 you took up the last number of Punch, or the last sermon, the chances 

 were ten to one that there was some allusion to the " missing link." 



Under these circumstances, the high moral tone assumed by the 

 Quarterly reviewer him of 1874, I mean is truly edifying. Joseph 

 Surface could not have done better. Unless I err, he is good enough 

 to include me among the members of that school whose speculations 

 are to bring back among us the gross profligacy of imperial Rome. 

 This may be doubtful. But what is not doubtful is the fact that mis- 

 representation and falsification are the favorite weapons of Jesuitical 

 Rome ; that anonymous slander is practice, and not mere speculation ; 

 and that it is a practice, the natural culmination of which is not the 

 pi'ofligacy of a Nero, or of a Commodus, but the secret poisonings of 

 the papal Borgias. 



I remember that when, in 1862,1 showed the proofs of "Man's 

 Place in Nature " to a cautious and sagacious friend of mine an ex- 

 pert in such matters he had nothing to say against my arguments, 

 but much to urge against the prudence of publishing them. Doubt- 

 less he foresaw that an unscrupulous critic, sheltered by his anonym- 

 ity, might charge me with advocating the " bestiality of man," and 

 with, thereby, endeavoring to loosen those moral bonds which hold 

 society together. It seemed to me, however, that a man of science 

 has no raison d'etre at all, unless he is willing to face much greater 

 risks than these for the sake of that which he believes to be true ; and, 

 further, that to a man of science such risks do not count for much 

 that they are by no means so serious as they are to a man of letters, 

 for example. Happily, the reputation and real success of a votary of 

 the physical sciences are now wholly independent of the periodicals 

 which are pleased to call themselves " influential organs of public 

 opinion." The only opinion he need care about, if he care for any 



