SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION 



ons with which to defeat their materialist an- 

 tagonist in open battle. 



Vainly did Agassiz try to save personal creation 

 and fixed species by his " Essay on Classification." 

 Vainly did the most reactionary of churches set 

 its learned men to work forging arguments 

 against Lamarckian, Darwinian, and Spencerian 

 trans formism. Instead of defeating the new 

 ideas, even the Jesuit scientists that had not quite 

 degenerated in spiritual obesity from lack of ex- 

 ercise of their reason became gradually " tainted " 

 with transformist ideas, and finally the church 

 itself sanctioned the greater part of the new ideas 

 as divine creations and, as usual, sought to ruin 

 by adoption what it could not conquer by force. 

 And the palaeontological work of Agassiz himself 

 compelled him to proclaim the fact of progressive 

 changes in the organisms of each successive geo- 

 logical epoch. 



By tracing the descent of man below the 

 primates, the question of the evolution of man 

 was not fully solved. It was merely stated in its 

 correct form, and science could not rest satisfied 

 and regard the Darwinian theories as proven, 

 until it had located the transition forms between 

 the common primeval ancestor of man and an- 

 thropoid apes and then followed the line of 



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