X PREFACE 



Such, I suppose, was my case, when I wrote 

 some passages which occur in an essay reprinted 

 among " Darwiniana." l But when, not long ago 

 " the voice " put it to me, whether I had better 

 not expunge, or modify, these passages ; whether f 

 really, they were not a little too strong ; I had to 

 reply, with all deference, that while, from a merely 

 literary point of view, I might admit them to be 

 rather crude, I must stand by the substance of these 

 items of my expenditure. I further ventured to 

 express the conviction that scientific criticism of 

 the Old Testament, since 1860, has justified every 

 word of the estimate of the authority of the 

 ecclesiastical "Moses" written at that time. And, 

 carried away by the heat of self-justification, I even 

 ventured to add, that the desperate attempt now set 

 afoot to force biblical and post-biblical mythology 

 into elementary instruction, renders it useful and 

 necessary to go on making a considerable outlay in 

 the same direction. Not yet, has " the cosmogony 

 of the semi-barbarous Hebrew " ceased to be the 

 "incubus of the philosopher, and the opprobrium 

 of the orthodox ; " not yet, has " the zeal of the 

 Bibliolater " ceased from troubling ; not yet, are 

 the weaker sort, even of the instructed, at rest 

 from their fruitless toil " to harmonise impossi- 

 bilities," and " to force the generous new wine of 

 science into the old bottles of Judaism." 



But I am aware that the head and front of my 



1 Collected Essays t vol. ii., "On the Origin of Species" (1860). 



