NOTES 469 



Dead Darwinism 



It is always easy to win a victory by pretending that the other side has 

 already been defeated ; and for many years past we have heard public 

 speakers, prelates, pseudo-philosophers, and literary men claiming that 

 Darwinism has now been completely disproved, that the theory of evolution 

 is unsound, and that everything came about in some mysterious manner which 

 each speaker has evolved for himself, as if he himself were the Deity ! Quite 

 recently one of our most distinguished literary men has been destroying 

 Darwinism in this way — relying upon the ignorance of his readers. It was 

 therefore with much pleasure that we saw Sir Ray Lankester enter the lists 

 against him fully armed in the manner which has always been such a terror 

 to the opponents of science ; and in half a minute the clever writer was 

 rolling in the dust of the arena. In other words, Sir Ray gave him a proper 

 drubbing in the columns of The Sunday Times of September 26, 1920. " Far 

 from Darwinism being dead, it is just as living as before, and is not even 

 sick or weakening. It is more firmly approved by those who have adequate 

 knowledge of biology, and by a larger body of people, than it was thirty 

 years ago. It is simply a shameless misrepresentation to say that Darwinism 

 is not in a sound and healthy condition. The wish is father to the thought." 

 The defeated wit now protests from the dust that Sir Ray got angry and hit 

 him too hard ! Serves him right. 



The Triumph of Education 



In October we were informed by many of our learned newspapers that 

 at the Pasteur Institute a microbiologist has examined one-franc banknotes 

 and has found them to be swarming with millions of bacilli like star-fish, 

 lobsters, centipedes, shrimps and grinning hobgoblins in appearance. This 

 was described by our learned press as a terrifying revelation. The great 

 biologist tore off a minute scrap from one of the notes and put it below 

 the microscope. Across the lens " monsters of more hideous form than we 

 ever imagined in a nightmare crawled and jumped. There were some like 

 tadpoles, with feathery tops ; some like worms, some like parrots about the 

 beak, some like earwigs, and some like geometric and astrological signs." 

 Of course bacilli have no such shapes, and appear under the microscope as 

 nothing but dots and dashes — to give a curt description. Imagine the state 

 of education in a country in which our principal newspapers can put forth 

 such trash in the hope that it will be believed by their readers. Yet the 

 subject of bacilli is one of life and death to everyone in the country. We 

 are spending millions on education and have a number of great universities 

 and public schools. Is this the final result ? 



The Encouragement of Science 



The Times of October 26 last states that Prof. (Max Margules, the 

 eminent Austrian Meteorologist, has died at the age of sixty-five from 

 starvation. He had been subsisting on a very small pension and was too 

 proud to beg for assistance. When men give up their pleasant little habit 

 of crucifying their benefactors then they may perhaps begin to emerge from 

 their present state of barbarism. 



The Unknown Warrior 



The burial of the unknown warrior in Westminster Abbey — the body of 

 an unnamed soldier found in France — was perhaps the most beautiful and 

 poetic tribute which any nation has ever paid to those who have fought 

 and suffered for their country in war ; and the event certainly showed that 

 the emotion excited by poetical ideas has not yet died out in Britain. We 



