642 Science and Savants in Modem Literature . [November, 
young ladies to mystify themselves and others with half- 
understood incoherencies, it had better be left out of consi- 
deration altogether. Might we therefore beg novelists, if 
they find it necessary to notice Evolutionism, to show its 
true influences in the person of some working naturalist 
who uses it successfully as a key to the problems of the 
organic world ? A Weissmann, a Bates, a Fritz Muller 
among the living, or a Balfour and a Belt among the dead, 
might serve as types. 
There is yet another manner in which Science is made to 
figure in the pages of modern fiction. In the good old 
times when discovery, or the attempt at discovery, was a 
criminal offence punishable possibly with imprisonment, or 
even death, there were substantially no novels. Still we 
have no doubt that the unfortunate sages of those days were 
sneered at and maligned in polite society no less emphatic- 
ally than they were execrated in convents and colleges. 
Now this is all altered : we have no longer the open perse- 
cution, but there is an organised attempt to render investi- 
gation in one important direction impossible. This movement 
has unfortunately met with the adhesion of not a few novel- 
ists, who are carrying on the war in a characteristic fashion. 
There are no substantial arguments which may be met, no 
alleged faCts which may be proved altogether fictitious ; but 
there are innuendoes which, falling, as they usually do, on 
ignorant minds, will too often take root. We need only refer 
to a recent tale by the editor of “ Longman’s Magazine,” in 
which an attempt is made to place physiological experi- 
mentation in an odious light. How many of the multitudes 
who read that popular serial will know, or will care to find 
out, the real truth of the question ? In making attacks of 
this kind men of Science are placed at a difficulty. We 
cannot issue counter-novels in which the Bestiarian agitator 
is shown up in his unscrupulousness, his inconsistency, his 
ignorance, and his mendacity. We have scarcely the funds, 
like our enemies, to hire light writers to plead our cause. 
Our pamphlets and justificatory documents, however decisive 
in themselves, fail to reach the persons who have read the 
attacks. 
So far, then, Science has very little scope for congratula- 
tion on the part she is made to play in fictitious literature. 
She is introduced, it would seem, mainly to be misrepre- 
sented and attacked. 
