FOREWORD xiii 



There is, in brief, no parity at all between Transformism 

 and the Copernican theory. Among other points of difference, 

 Tuccimei notes especially the following: 'The Copernican 

 system," he remarks, "explains that which is, whereas evolu- 

 tion attempts to explain that which was; it enters, in other 

 words, into the problem of origins, an insoluble problem in 

 the estimation of many illustrious evolutionists, according to 

 whom no experimental verification is possible, given the 

 processes and factors in conjunction with which the theory 

 was proposed. But what is of still greater significance for 

 those who desire to see a parallelism between the two theories 

 is the fact that the Copernican system became, with the dis- 

 coveries of Newton, a demonstrated thesis, scarcely fifty years 

 after the death of Galileo; the theory of evolution, on the 

 other hand, is at the present day no longer able to hold its own 

 even as an hypothesis, so numerous are its incoherencies and 

 the objections to it raised by its own partisans." (*'La Deca- 

 denza di una Teoria," 1908, p. 11.) 



The prospect, then, of a renewal of the Galileo episode 

 is exceedingly remote. Far more imminent to the writer seems 

 the danger that the well-intentioned rescuers of religion may 

 be obliged to perform a most humiliating volte face, after hav- 

 ing accepted all too hastily a doctrine favored only for the 

 time being in scientific circles. It is, in fact, by no means 

 inconceivable that the scientific world will eventually discard 

 the now prevalent dogma of evolution. In that case those 

 who have seen fit to reconcile religion with evolution will have 

 the questionable pleasure of unreconciling it in response to 

 this reversal of scientific opinion. 



On the whole, the safest attitude toward evolution is the 

 agnostic one. It commits us to no uncertain position. It does 

 not compromise our intellectual sincerity by requiring us to 

 accept the dogmatism of scientific orthodoxy as a substitute 

 for objective evidence. It precludes the possible embarrass- 

 ment of having to unsay what we formerly said. And last, 

 but not least, it is the attitude of simple truth ; for the truest 



