1887 PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 13 



He wound up with some banter upon the Duke's 

 picture of a scientific Eeign of Terror, whereby, it 

 seemed, all men of science were compelled to accept 

 the Darwinian faith, and against which Huxley him- 

 self was preparing to rebel, as if, 



forsooth, I am supposed to be waiting for the signal of 

 " revolt," which some fiery spirits among these young 

 men are to raise before I dare express my real opinions 

 concerning questions about which we older men had to 

 fight in the teeth of fierce public opposition and obloquy 

 — of something which might almost justify even the 

 grandiloquent epithet of a Eeign of Terror — before our 

 excellent successors had left school. 



Here for a while the debate ceased. But in the 

 September number of the Nineteenth Century the 

 Duke of Argyll returned to the fray with an article 

 called " A Great Lesson," in which he attempted to 

 offer evidence in support of his assertions concerning 

 the scientific reign of terror. The two chief pieces 

 of evidence adduced were Bathybius and Dr. (now 

 Sir J.) Murray's theory of coral reefs. The former 

 was instanced as a blunder due to the desire of find- 

 ing support for the Dar^vinian theory in the existence 

 of this widespread primordial life ; the latter as a 

 case in which a new theory had been systematically 

 burked, for fear of damaging the infallibility of 

 Darwin, who had propounded a different theory of 

 coral reefs ! 



Huxley's reply to this was contained in the latter 

 half of an article which appeared in the Nineteenth 



