SKETCH OF CHARLES R. DARWIN, LL.D. 263 



scientific thinkers of England, with whom the proportion of those 

 ready to deny it grows less from year to year. In Germany it became, 

 in the course of ten years, more or less completely accepted by those 

 best qualified to judge, and was the occasion of the production of a 

 considerable literature of arguments and facts in its favor, without 

 encountering any very serious opposition. In France, the truth of the 

 theory was far less extensively admitted, and it continued to be, for 

 many years, the object of a vigorous and often bitter opposition, the 

 echoes of which have hardly yet died away. A prolonged discussion 

 took place in the French Academy of Sciences relative to the merits 

 of the author of the theory in 1870, when Mr. Darwin was nominated 

 to fill the vacancy in the zoological section caused by the death of M. 

 Purkinge. M. Milne -Edwards first spoke in his favor, saying that, 

 while he was himself absolutely opposed to evolutional doctrines, he 

 rendered homage to the value of the special works of Mr. Darwin, 

 especially to the theory of the formation of coral islands. M. Elie de 

 Beaumont added his testimony to the value of this theory, and re- 

 marked that Mr. Darwin had done good work which he had spoiled 

 by dangerous and unfounded speculations ; he should not be elected 

 until he had renounced them. M. Emile Blanchard was very severe 

 upon Mr. Darwin for an hour, styling him an " intelligent amateur " ; 

 and M. Elie de Beaumont interpolated that his work was the " froth 

 of science." M. de Quatrefages replied to M. Blanchard, saying that 

 there were two men included in Mr. Darwin, a naturalist observer and 

 a theoretical thinker : the naturalist is exact, sagacious, and patient ; 

 the thinker is original and penetrating, often just, sometimes too rash. 

 That the theory with which his name is connected, that of natural 

 selection, has in it something seductive and plausible, is shown by 

 its having been worked out by such men as Darwin, Wallace, and 

 Naudin, laboring independently and in different paths. If the ideas 

 and the works of Darwin are such as some of his opponents repre- 

 sent, how can they have obtained the support, in less than ten 

 years, of such men as Lyell, Hooker, Huxley, Karl Vogt, Lubbock, 

 Haeckel, Filippi, and Brandt himself, who has just been elected 

 correspondent in opposition to Mr. Darwin ? Then, having enu- 

 merated Mr. Darwin's works in geology, comprising seven real 

 contributions to the science, and in zoology, his works on the origin 

 of species and variation, and particularly his investigations of the 

 strange variations in fowls, pigeons, and rabbits, M. de Quatrefages 

 summed up by saying: "Mr. Darwin is an eminent naturalist, who 

 wishes to remove from science the invocation of the first cause, and to 

 seek the explanation of the natural facts of the organic world in sec- 

 ondary causes, as was done long ago in geology, chemistry, and phys- 

 ics. But he goes no further ; and we ought not to judge Darwin by 

 the words of a few disciples who seem never to have read his works. 

 It would be unjust to make him responsible for the exaggerations and 



