The Zoologist — June, 1871. 2623 



The sentiment conveyed in these lines is in exact accordance 

 with those earliest records which prove such sentiments to have 

 imbued the minds of the earliest writers. It appears to me a proof 

 of modern decadence, that minds of the highest type should have 

 existed in the remotest ages. Literature is a telescope that brings 

 far distant events in close proximity to our mental vision. Assuming 

 the account of creation to be a myth, a fable, a romance, a poem, a 

 " rhapsodical fiction ;" supposing Adam to have been " the creation 

 of a poet's dream," and Eve the " child of a distempered imagina- 

 tion," can we assume that the genius, call it human genius if you 

 will, that inspired the Book of Genesis, is also a myth ; assuming 

 the sufferings of Job to be a fable, his patience an allegory, can we 

 ignore the existence of that wonderful fable, of that matchless 

 allegory ? I cheerfidly grant that the Iliad and Odessy are fables, 

 but the mind that produced such fables cannot itself be a fable ; it 

 must have existed, and its date must have been remote. No argu- 

 ment can show that the Books of Genesis and Job, the Iliad and 

 the Odessy, are non-existent; no argument can reduce their 

 antiquity ; and viewing them in the most common-place and matter- 

 of-fact manner, no argument can detract from their literary merit. 

 Here are the witnesses of my faith in the mental superiority of 

 my ancestors, — Genesis and Job, Iliad and Odessy, Edfou and 

 Karnac, Balbec and Palmyra : let Mr. Darwin cross-examine ihera 

 as he may please. We learn from anthropological and ethnological 

 societies that a large proportion of the human beings now inhabiting 

 the earth have no idea of a superintending Providence, that 

 they slay their own children, fatten and devour their fellow- 

 creatures : let Mr. Darwin examine these witnesses also. 



In closing these volumes, I cannot resist the conviction that 

 Mr. Darwin has ventured beyond his depth in essaying to apply 

 his hypothesis to man. I think it next to impossible that he 

 should make a single convert, except among those — and they, 

 alas, are too numerous — who are ever ready, like the Athenians of 

 old, to hear and to tell some new thing. In those matchless tales, 

 which, under the guise of amusement, and in the garb of fiction, 

 often the wildest and hence the most attractive, conceal or rather 

 reveal the perfection of human wisdom, we find one the moral of 

 which may be safely applied to this new light — this hypothesis of 

 evolution. The princess who was attracted by the brightness and 

 glitter of the new lamp, and who readily gave up her old lamp in 



