et Imbecillitate Darwiniana. 9 1 



in South Kensington, to whose founders 

 and perpetuators and organisers, great and 

 small, from Sir Hans Sloane down, we all 

 of us owe a debt of gratitude greater than 

 we can ever repay. For here every man 

 who chooses can master for nothing the 

 rudiments and principles of Nature. But 

 as often as I go in, I am suddenly seized 

 with trembling, and a divine impulse. I feel 

 within me a very great laughter: je suis 



comme bourre de rire 



Right opposite the door, on the stairs, 

 about thirty feet high, or it may be more, 

 towers a colossal statue. Not of the Founder, 

 not of Aristotle : not of the man, who called 

 all the particular sciences out of nonentity 

 into being, and created the logical method 

 of science in general that constitutes their 

 unity : not of the man, who, two thousand 

 years before Newton, strove without data 

 and without mathematics to obtain an ex- 



