96 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



or, as the late eminent naturalist, Philip Gosse, 

 seriously suggested in his whimsical book Omphalos : 

 an Attempt to untie the Geological Knot, they were 

 but simulacra wherewith a mocking Deity rebuked 

 the curiosity of man. Every explanation, save the 

 right and obvious one, had its defenders, because it 

 was essential to support some theory to rebut the 

 evidence supplied by remains of animals as to the 

 existence of death in the world before the fall of 

 Adam. Otherwise, the statements in the Old Testa- 

 ment, on which the Pauline reasoning rested, were 

 baseless, and to discredit these was to undermine 

 the authority of the Scriptures from Genesis to the 

 Apocalypse. No wonder, therefore, that theology 

 was up in arms, or that it saw in geology a deadlier 

 foe than astronomy had seemed to be in ages past. 

 The Sorbonne, or Faculty of Theology, in Paris 

 burnt the books of the geologists, banished their 

 authors, and, in the case of Buffon, the famous 

 naturalist, condemned him to retract the awful 

 heresy, which was declared ' contrary to the creed of 

 the Church,' contained in these words : ' The waters 

 of the sea have produced the mountains and valleys 

 of the land ; the waters of the heavens, reducing all 

 to a level, will at last deliver the whole land over to 

 the sea, and the sea successively prevailing over the 

 land, will leave dry new continents like those which 

 we inhabit.' So Buffon repeated the submission 

 of Galileo, and published his recantation : ' I 

 declare that I had no intention to contradict the 

 text of Scripture ; that I believe most firmly all 

 therein related about the creation, both as to order 

 of time and matter of fact. I abandon . everything 



