20 EVOLUTION, SOCIAL AND ORGANIC 



village priest and kept their ships clos^ to 

 land, afraid lest they should sail off the edge 

 of the world, or into that great hole where the 

 angels put the sun at night, after they had 

 finished rolling it across the sky. 



It was the growth and final triumph of this 

 trading class, with economic interests and a 

 mode of wealth production that demanded the 

 liberation of science, that abolished the thumb- 

 screw and the stake. Voltaire, Rousseau, and 

 the encyclopaedists were obnoxious to the 

 feudal regime, lay and clerical, because they 

 were the prophets and mouthpieces of the 

 rising bourgeoisie. 



This class, by the emancipation of science, 

 performed a lasting service to the human race. 

 The society in which it predominated, at once 

 produced a prolific crop of great thinkers. 

 Sweden had Linnaeus, England had Lyell, 

 Germany had Goethe; but the palm fell to 

 France. In the revolution France had sup- 

 pressed the Sorbonne^ that theological institu- 

 tion which had always shown itself the official 

 and bitter enemy of science, and she soon after 

 equipped scientific expeditions, which gave her 

 the greatest thinkers of that day — Cuvier, St. 

 Hilaire, and, most illustrious of all that courag- 

 eous pioneer of modern evolution, Jean La- 

 marck. 



