52 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



II 



of the justice of scientific conclusions, in all that 

 relates to the origin of things, and, among them, 

 of species. In this nineteenth century, as at the 

 dawn of modern physical science, the cosmogony 

 of the semi-barbarous Hebrew is the incubus of 

 the philosopher and the opprobrium of the ortho- 

 dox. Who shall number the patient and earnest 

 seekers after truth, from the days of Galileo until 

 now, whose lives have been embittered and their 

 good name blasted by the mistaken zeal of Biblio- 

 laters ? Who shall count the host of weaker men 

 whose sense of truth has been destroyed in the effort 

 to harmonise impossibilities whose life has been 

 wasted in the attempt to force the generous new 

 wine of Science into the old bottles of Judaism, com- 

 pelled by the outcry of the same strong party ? 



It is true that if philosophers have suffered, their 

 cause has been amply avenged. Extinguished 

 theologians lie about the cradle of every science as 

 the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules ; and 

 history records that whenever science and ortho- 

 doxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been 

 forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed 

 if not annihilated ; scotched, if not slain. But 

 orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought. 

 It learns not, neither can it forget ; and though, 

 at present, bewildered and afraid to move, it is as 

 willing as ever to insist that the first chapter of 

 Genesis contains the beginning and the end of 

 sound science ; and to visit, with such petty 



