SCIENCE IN " BOND AGE" 101 



The same writer furnishes us with the real 

 explanation of Buffon's attitude when he says 

 that Buffon was " too sane and matter-of-fact a 

 thinker to go much beyond his facts, and his 

 evolution doctrine remained always tentative." 

 Buffon, like many another man, from St. Augustine 

 down to his own times, considered the trans- 

 formist explanation of living nature. He saw that 

 it unified and simplified the conceptions of species 

 and that there were certain facts which seemed 

 strongly to support it. But he does not seem to 

 have thought that they were sufficient to establish 

 it and he puts forward his views in the tentative 

 manner which has just been suggested. 



The fact is that those who father the accusa- 

 tions with which we have been dealing either do 

 not know, or scrupulously conceal their knowledge, 

 that what they proclaim to be scientific cowardice 

 is really scientific caution, a thing to be lauded and 

 not to be decried. 



Let us turn to apply the considerations with 

 which we have been concerned to the case of 

 Galileo, to which generally misunderstood affair 

 we must very briefly allude, since it is the stand- 

 by of anti-Catholic controversialists. Monsig- 

 nor Benson, in connection with the quotation 

 recently cited, proclaimed himself " a violent 

 defender of the Cardinals against Galileo." Per- 

 haps no one will be surprised at his attitude, but 

 those who are not familiar with his Life and 

 Letters will certainly be surprised to learn that 

 Huxley, after examining into the question, 

 " arrived at the conclusion that the Pope and 



