74 E VOL U TION A ND DOGMA . 



assent. The most distinguished of these, as we 

 have already learned, was Professor Louis Agassiz, 

 who remained a strenuous opponent of the new 

 doctrine until the day of his death. Indeed, in the 

 last course of lectures he ever gave, we find a strong 

 arraignment of the development hypothesis, a hy- 

 pothesis which was fascinating indeed, but one, 

 so Agassiz declared, that was negatived by the facts 

 of nature and misleading and mischievous in its 

 tendencies. Even to-day the illustrious naturalist 

 has sympathizers and followers and that, too, among 

 the ablest arid most conspicuous representatives of 

 modern science. Among anti-evolutionists, living 

 or recently deceased, I need instance only such 

 recognized savants as the noted geologists, Sir J. W. 

 Dawson, Barrande, Davidson, Grand Eury, Car- 

 ruthers, and that veteran biologist the rival of 

 Pasteur on the importance and brilliance of his re- 

 searches on the lower forms of life the late Profes- 

 sor P. J. van Beneden, of the great Catholic univer- 

 sity of Louvain. 1 In referring to the subject the 

 distinguished Belgian professor asserts: "It is evi- 



1 The distinguished French savant, the Marquis de Nadail- 

 lac, is often spoken of as an anti-evolutionist, but this is an 

 error. So far he is neither an evolutionist nor an anti-evolu- 

 tionist ; he merely suspends judgment. Before the anthro- 

 pological section of the International Catholic Scientific Con- 

 gress, assembled last year at Brussels, he expressed himself on 

 the subject as follows : " Pour ma part, si je ne suis guere dis- 

 pose a admettre les conclusions de 1'ecole evolutioniste, je ne 

 puis non plus les rejeter absolument. Le jury en 6cosse, outre 

 la reponse habituelle, a le droit, sans se prononcer sur le fait en 

 lui-meme, de repondre not proven cela n'est pas prouve. 

 Telleest la disposition de mon esprit; telle est aujourd'hui ma 

 conclusion ; et je crois qu'elle sera celle de tous ceux qui abord- 

 eront cette etude sans parti pris et avec 1'unique desir d'arriver 



