LITTLE 

 JOURNEYS 



Corot, Daubigny, Diaz. And the people who worked 

 a revolution in the theological thought of Christendom 

 were these : Darwin, Spencer, Mill, Tyndall, 'Wallace, 

 Huxley, and yes, George Eliot who bolstered the brain 

 of Herbert Spencer when he was learning to think for 

 himself. When the victory had become a rout, there 

 were many others joined forces with the evolu- 

 tionists, but at first the thinkers named above stood 

 together and received the unsavory gibes and jeers of 

 those who got their episcopopagy and science from the 

 same source. 



Darwin was the only man in the group who was a 

 university graduate, and he once said that he owed 

 nothing to his alma mater, save the stimulus derived 

 from its disapproval. For the work these men had to 

 do there was no precedent no one had gone before and 

 blazed a trail. Learning, like capital, is timid, but ignor- 

 ance coupled with a desire to know, is bold. Do I then 

 make a plea for ignorance? Yes, most assuredly. It is 

 just as well not to know so much, as to be a theolog- 

 ian and know so many things that are hot true. Learn- 

 ing and institutions of learning subdue men into con- 

 formity ; only the man who belongs to nothing is free ; 

 and ignorance as well as indifference to what the world 

 has said and done, are necessary factors in the charac- 

 ter of him who would do a great work. It was the 

 combined ignorance and boldness of Columbus that 

 made it possible for him to give the world a continent. 

 Q Yet the man who has not had a college training often 

 feels he has missed something valuable there is 

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