42 



FOUNDATION AND OBJECTS 



of the older learning at the appearance and claims 

 of its younger rival. In any case, there is something 

 worthy of note, and something that conveys encour- 

 agement, in the difference of the feeling which prevails 

 now and the feeling that was indicated then. Few 

 men are now influenced by the strange idea that 

 questions of religious belief depend on the issues of 

 physical research. Few men, whatever their creed, 

 would now seek their geology in the books of their 

 religion, or, on the other hand, would fancy that the 

 laboratory or the microscope could help them to 

 penetrate the mysteries which hang over the nature 

 and the destiny of the soul of man. And the old 

 learning no longer contests the share in education 

 which is claimed by the new, or is blind to the supreme 

 influence which natural knowledge is exercising in 

 moulding the human mind/ 



The controversy of 1860, to which Lord Salisbury 

 referred, was concerned with results of Darwin's 

 investigations into the origin of species, and falls for 

 fuller consideration later in this record (Chap. II). 

 But without multiplying examples either of opposi- 

 tion to the Association (which indeed have often 

 been trivial or trivially expressed) or of answers to 

 opponents, it may be added that one of the principal 

 grounds of hostility, shallower, indeed, than those 

 summarised in the quotation above, but nevertheless 

 cogent, is pretty clear. The fundamental idea in the 

 minds of the leading founders of the Association was 

 undoubtedly to create a body which should form a 

 mouthpiece of appeal from science to the world at 

 large, and those who objected did so partly on 

 account of some vague sense that science might 

 degrade itself by making such an appeal, coupled, 



