44 



" On Geology and Darwinism ' Dagentree ' holds decided opinions. 

 He regards the former as a science so completely in its infancy that to 

 attempt to reconstruct our theology in reference to it is simply absurd : 

 * Late researches have, I think, proved more clearly than ever it was 

 proved before first, that man is a very recent inhabitant of this planet ; 

 and, secondly, that man has not been produced by any process of selection 

 or development .... Darwin has left the origin of species, not where 

 he found it, but darker than ever ; for he has proved that there 

 ought to be no species at all ; and if his views were true, there 

 could have been no such thing.' This is admirably put, and not easily 

 answered, and the following reply to the scientists who object to the 

 argument from design is irrefragible. ' The professor who sees in nature 

 no traces of a Creator, will find in a wretched piece of flint, as he peers 

 enchanted through his spectacles, the long-lost proofs of pre- Adamite 

 man.' The truth is that neoteric science is ruined by the shallow sciolist, 

 the lecturing professor, who, the moment a new notion strikes him, airs 

 it to an audience of ladies at Albemarle-street or South Kensington. 

 ' Natural selection ' ' protoplasm ' ' air germs ' come into fashion and 

 go out again like paniers and chignons.'" GLOBE. 



And lastly our friend " Punch" whose wit has always a good deal 

 of wisdom in it. 



"Darwin's speculation 

 Is of another sort ; 



'Tis one which demonstration 

 In nowise doth support. 



Time, theory's dispeller, 

 Will out of mind remove it : 



We say, as said old Weller, 

 ' Prove it.' And he can't prove it." PUNCH. 



The following is Dr. Carpenter's opinion, the President of the British 

 Association : 



" There is a great deal of what I cannot but regard as fallacious and 

 misleading philosophy ' oppositions of science falsely so called' abroad 

 in the world at the present time. And I hope to satisfy you that those 

 who set up their own conception* of the orderly sequence which they discern 

 in the phenomena of nature, as fixed and determinate lams by which those 

 phenomena not only are within all human experience, but always have 

 been, and always tmuit be, invariably governed, are really guilty of the 

 intellectual arrogance they condemn in the systems of the ancients, and 

 place themselves in diametrical antagonism to those real philosophers, 

 by whose comprehensive grasp and penetrating insight that order has 

 been so far disclosed." 

 And, another, 



" It must not be supposed that there is much unity among these 

 ' philosophers,' But in this they all agree, that they argue d posteriori, 

 and they are all infallible." 



Well wrote Canon Kingsley : "All we have to do is to wait. 

 Nominalism, and that Sensationalism which has sprung from Nominal- 

 ism, are running fast to seed. Comteism seems to me its supreme effort, 

 after which the whirligig of time may bring round its revenges, and 

 Kealism, and we who hold the Realist creed may have our turn. Only 

 wait the end of that Philosophy is very near." " The tide is setting 

 in against Darwinism." 



