294 FRANCIS ORPEN MORRIS 



"THE RED HOUSE PARK, IPSWICH, 

 December 2, 1876. 



" REV. SIR, I owe you an apology for not sooner 

 acknowledging your courtesy in sending me a copy 

 of your valuable exposure of Darwinism, but I 

 usually, when I hope to read a book, wait till I have 

 so done before thanking the author. 



" I have only this day perused the pamphlet, and 

 most heartily thank you for it. I believe that your 

 mode of treating the preposterous fictions of Darwin 

 is the only way to shake the self-confident tone of 

 would-be philosophers. Newton's grandest saying 

 (after ' Deus non est ALternitas sed dSternus ') was 

 ' Hypotheses non fingo. 1 I have more than once 

 quoted this, and once at a Royal Society dinner. 



"Newton kept back his Principia for years be- 

 cause a mistake had been made in the measurement 

 of an arc of the meridian, so closely did he keep to 

 experimental truth. Now the crudest fancy, nothing 

 like so ingenious as the Ptolemaic cycles, because 

 really the Darwin fancy stumbles at every step, is 

 exalted into a rank exceeding that of the discovery 

 of gravitation. 



" I remember excommunicating from the 



scientific fold any one who believed that man could 

 come from a single pair, regard being had to the 

 negro, Chinese, &c., &c., and then saying, at the 

 meeting of the British Association, he had wholly 

 forsaken his former view, and Darwin is the new 

 Mahomet, and all are to be excommunicated who 



