184 ON THE RECEPTION OF 



of its publication, I do not recollect anything quite so foolish 

 and unmannerly as the 'Quarterly Review' article, unless, 

 perhaps, the address of a Reverend Professor to the Dublin 

 Geological Society might enter into competition with it. But 

 a large proportion of Mr. Darwin's critics had a lamentable 

 resemblance to the 'Quarterly' reviewer, in so far as they 

 lacked either the will, or the wit, to make themselves masters 

 of his doctrine ; hardly any possessed the knowledge required 

 to follow him through the immense range of biological and 

 geological science which the ' Origin ' covered ; while, too 

 commonly, they had prejudged the case on theological 

 grounds, and, as seems to be inevitable when this happens, 

 eked out lack of reason by superfluity of railing. 



But it will be more pleasant and more profitable to consider 

 those criticisms, which were acknowledged by writers of 

 scientific authority, or which bore internal evidence of the 

 greater or less competency and, often, of the good faith, of 

 their authors. Restricting my survey to a twelvemonth, or 

 thereabouts, after the publication of the ' Origin,' I find 

 among such critics Louis Agassiz ; * Murray, an excellent 

 entomologist ; Harvey, a botanist of considerable repute ; 

 and the author of an article in the ' Edinburgh Review,' all 

 strongly adverse to Darwin. Pictet, the distinguished and 

 widely learned paleontologist of Geneva, treats Mr. Darwin 

 with a respect which forms a grateful contrast to the tone of 

 some of the preceding writers, but consents to go with him 



* "The arguments presented by from that now generally assigned. 



Darwin in favor of a universal to them, I shall therefore consider 



derivation from one primary form the transmutation theory as a scien- 



of all the peculiarities existing now tific mistake, untrue in its facts, un- 



among living beings have not made scientific in its method, and mis- 



the slightest impression on my mind. chievous in its tendency." Silli- 



" Until the facts of Nature are man's 'Journal,' July 1860, pp. 143, 



shown to have been mistaken by 154. Extract from the 3rd vol. of 



those who have collected them, and ' Contributions to the Natural His- 



that they have a different meaning tory of the United States.' 





