CHAPTER XVII 



SOME ADVANCES IN NATURAL SCIENCE IN THE NINE- 

 TEENTH CENTURY. COSMOGONY AND EVOLUTION 



What the classical renaissance was to men of the fifteenth and 

 sixteenth centuries, the scientific movement is to us. It has given 

 a new trend to education. It has changed the outlook of the mind. 

 It has given a new intellectual background to life. Sadler. 



The rapid increase of natural knowledge, which is the chief char- 

 acteristic of our age, is effected in various ways. The main army of 

 science moves to the conquest of new worlds slowly and surely, nor 

 ever cedes an inch of the territory gained. But the advance is covered 

 and facilitated by the ceaseless activity of clouds of light troops 

 provided with a weapon always efficient, if not always an arm of 

 precision the scientific imagination. It is the business of these 

 enfants perdus of science to make raids into the realm of ignorance 

 wherever they see, or think they see, a chance; and cheerfully to 

 accept defeat, or it may be annihilation, as the reward of error. 

 Unfortunately the public, which watches the progress of the cam- 

 paign, too often mistakes a dashing incursion . . . for a forward 

 movement of the main body; fondly imagining that the strategic 

 movement to the rear, which occasionally follows, indicates a battle 

 lost by science. Huxley. 



INFLUENCE OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY REVOLUTIONS. If the 

 French Revolution had done no more than to upset as it did the 

 social equilibrium of the centuries, its effect in stimulating inquiry 

 and generating doubt in almost every direction could not have 

 failed to further scientific studies and promote wholesome investi- 

 gation into the fundamental relations of man and nature. But 

 even before that revolution, some of the ablest minds in France, 

 keenly alive to the teachings of Descartes and Newton and the 

 lessons of seventeenth century science, had rejected the cur- 

 rent cosmogony of Moses, although they had nothing with which 

 to replace it. In particular, the eighteenth century questioned 

 all custom and authority, and the theory of special creation 

 possessed no other basis. 



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