IV. 

 DARWIN'S THEORY OF PANGENESIS. 



PRELUDE ON CURRENT EVENTS. 



AN ancient wall around the city of Gottingen has 

 been converted into a broad and lofty embankment, 

 and crowned with lime-trees ; and under them runs a 

 wide, smooth walk, on which the professors and stu- 

 dents of that university city are often found pacing 

 to and fro. There has been established lately in 

 Great Britain a magazine called "The Nineteenth 

 Century ; " and it has signalized its entrance upon 

 the field of periodical literature by what it calls a 

 modern symposium, or published interchange of 

 views among men of opposing schools in physical and 

 religious science, on the topic of the immortality of 

 the soul. So thoroughly permeated are the discus- 

 sions of many English theologians with tremor in the 

 presence of the passing fashions of thought in the 

 British materialistic philosophical school, that I shall 

 venture to ask you, in considering what the English 

 symposium has said, to place that gathering of learned 

 men face to face with their German peers. Let a 



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