PROEM TO GENESIS. 615 



measured scorn. These are they who impose upon man a burden of 

 false science in the name of religion, who dictate as a Divine com- 

 mand " an implicit belief in the cosmogony of Genesis ; " and who 

 " stir unwisdom and fanaticism to their depths." * Judgments so 

 severe should surely be supported by citation or other evidence, for 

 which I look in vain. To some they might suggest the idea that 

 Passion may sometimes unawares intrude even within the precincts 

 of the temple of Science. But I admit that a great master of his art 

 may well be provoked, when he finds his materials tumbled about by 

 incapable hands, and may mistake for irreverence what is only want 

 of skill. 



While acknowledging the great courtesy with which Professor 

 Huxley treats his antagonist individually, and while simply listening 

 to his denunciations of the Reconcilers as one listens to distant 

 thunders, with a sort of sense that after all they will do no great 

 harm, I must presume to animadvert with considerable freedom upon 

 his method ; upon the sweeping character of his advocacy ; upon his 

 perceptible exaggeration of points in controversy ; upon his mode of 

 deaUng with authorities ; and upon the curious fallacy of substitution 

 by which he enables himself to found the widest proscriptions of the 

 claim of the Book of Genesis to contain a Divine record upon a 

 reasoned impeachment of its scientific accuracy in, as I shall show, a 

 single particular. 



As to the first of these topics, nothing can be more equitable than 

 Professor Huxley's intention to intervene as a " science proctor " in 

 that part of the debate raised by M. Reville, " to which he proposes 

 to restrict his observations " (P. S. M. p. 449). This is the part on 

 which he proposes in his first page to report as a student — and every 

 reader will inwardly add, as one of the most eminent among all 

 students — of natural science. Now this is not the cosmogonical part 

 of the account in Genesis. On Genesis i. 1-19, containing the cos- 

 mogony, he does not report as an expert, but refers us (p. 859) to 

 "those who are specially conversant with the sciences involved;" 

 adding his opinion about their opinion. Yet in his second page, with- 

 out making any reference to this broad distinction, he at once forgets 

 the just limitation of his first, and our ''proctor for science" pro- 

 nounces on M. Reville's estimate, not of the fourfold succession in the 

 stratification of the earth, but of "the account of the Creation given 

 in the Book of Genesis," that its terms are as "respectful as in his 

 judgment they arc just" {ibid.). Thus the proctorship for science, 

 justly assumed for matters withm his province as a student, is rather 

 hastily extended to matters which he himself declares to be beyond it. 

 In truth it will appear, that as there are many roads to heaven with 

 one ending, so, provided only a man arrives at the conclusion that the 

 great Proem of Genesis lends no support to the argument for Revela- 

 * "Popular Science Monthly," February, 1S86, pp. 459, 460. 



