2616 The Zoologist — June, 1871. 



a science which I cherish and love, as an engine for the subversion 

 of a religion which I also cherish and love, and in which I 

 devoutly believe. I decline to bolster up my position by adducing 

 proof that others share ray belief in this religion, and in the Bible 

 as its exponent; but I regard Mr. Darwin's exposition of a new 

 faith as a private and individual grievance, inasmuch as he has 

 done this through the instrumentality of a science I have always 

 been studying and whilom attempting to teach. In reply it may 

 be truthfully objected that Mr. Darwin has expressed no intention 

 of conlravening the statements or subverting the authority of 

 Scripture ; yet this appears to me the inevitable result of accepting 

 as true the principles of man's evolution which he has laid down. 

 Now if this be the tendency of legitimate science, then Science or 

 Scripture must be given up. Antagonistic principles cannot be 

 welded together: no sophistry, however ingenious, can possibly 

 reconcile them : it is disingenuous to attempt it. Science is true ; 

 in other words, it is a simple and single-minded search after 

 truth. Whenever it shall be made manifest to my mental per- 

 ception that the Bible and truth are antagonistic, I must give up 

 the Bible, and range myself under the banner of truth. At 

 present I sec no necessity for this. I cannot consent to give 

 up truth. But Mr. Darwin has not proved the ape-descent of 

 man. I consider that his work is characterized throughout by 

 what 1 believe is called a pelitio principii, or, in more common- 

 place parlance, " a begging of the question" : he reasons in a circle, 

 and his cincle, like every other, returns into itself. It will be seen 

 that the brief but very unmistakeable passages I have quoted occur 

 at the commencement of his own laboins ; and although they per- 

 fectly accord with the longer passages which I previously cited, it 

 will I think be found that this method of reasoning is altogether 

 unsound. Mr. Darwin assumes tliat his view of what we call 

 "creation," or the world of organized beings, is the correct view, 

 and therefore that he is at liberty to base every argument on the 

 assumption. I would suggest that the logical mode of solving so 

 profound and so difBcult a question is not to assume that we had 

 hairy-bodied ancestors furnished with a tail, but to prove that it 

 was so : the only passage in the entire work in which 1 can find a 

 tendency in this particular direction has reference to our de- 

 scendants and not our ancestors; for the unborn human baby, in 

 whom this character was discovered, could never have become 



