lxxil REPORT—1868. 
them may be discussed apart from all doubts as to the fundamental facts.” 
The liberty thus to discuss no one may dispute or curtail, but the biologist 
will ask, to what end can discussion lead? Who would attach much weight 
to the verdict of a judge passed on evidence of which he knew neither the 
truth nor the extent? As well might a boy guiltless of mathematics, set 
himself to test the 47th proposition of the 1st book of Euclid, by constructing 
paper squares corresponding to the sides of a right-angled triangle, then 
cutting up the smaller squares, try to fit the pieces into the larger, and 
failing to do this with exactitude, conclude of the problem, as the reviewer 
does of the theory, that it is “‘ an ingenious and plausible speculation, marking 
at once the ignorance of the age and the ability of the philosopher.” 
The most formidable argument urged by the reviewer is, that “ the age of 
the inhabited world as calculated by solar physics, is proved to have been 
limited to a period wholly inconsistent with Darwin’s views.” This would 
be a valid objection if these views depended on those of one school of geolo- 
gists; and if the 500,000,000 years, which the reviewer adopts as the age of 
the world, were, as an approximate estimate, accepted by either astronomers 
or physicists. But, in the first place, the reviewer assumes that the rate of 
change in the condition of the earth’s surface was vastly more rapid at the 
beginning than now, and has eradually slackened since; but overlooks the 
consequence, that according to all Mr. Darwin’s principles the operations of 
natural selection must in such cases have been formerly correspondingly more 
rapid: and in the second, are these speculations as to the solidity of the 
earth’s crust dating back only 500,000,000 years, to be depended upon? In 
his great work, the author* quoted for these numbers, gives as possible limits 
20,000,000, or 400,000,000 years, whilst other philosophers assign to the 
habitable globe an age far exceeding the longest of these periods. Surely, 
in estimates of such a nature as the above, which are calculated from data 
themselves in a great degree hypothetical, there are no principles upon which 
we are warranted in assuming the speculations of the astronomer to be more 
worthy of confidence than those of the biologist. 
A former most distinguished President, and himself an astronomer, Pro- 
fessor Whewell, has said of astronomy that “it is not only the queen of 
sciences, but the only perfect science, the only branch of human knowledge 
in which we are able fully and clearly to interpret nature’s oracles, so that 
by that which we have tried we receive a prophecy of that which is un- 
tried”’+. Now, whilst fully admitting, and proudly as every scientific man 
ought, that astronomy is the most certain in her methods and results of all 
the sciences, that she has called forth some of the highest efforts of the intel- 
lect, and that her results far transcend in grandeur those of any other science, 
I think we may hesitate before we therefore admit her queenship, her per- 
fection, or her sole claims to interpretation and to prophecy. Her methods 
are those of the mathematicians; she may call Geometry and Algebra her 
handmaidens, but she is none the less their slave. No science is really per- 
fect, certainly not that which lately erred nearly 4,000,000 miles in so fun- 
damental a datum as the earth’s distance from the sun. Have Faraday and 
Von Baer interpreted no oracles of nature fully and clearly? Have Cuvier 
and Dalton not prophesied, and been true prophets? Claims to queenship do 
not accord with the spirit of science; rather would I liken the domain of 
natural knowledge to a hive, in which every comb is a science, and truth 
the one queen over them all. 
* Thomson and Tait, Treatise on Natural Philosophy, vol. i. p. 716. 
+ Rey. W, Whewell. Reports, 1833, p. xiii. 
