Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/634

616, it does not much matter how he gets there. For in this "just" account of the Creation I have shown that M. Réville supports his accusation of scientific error by three particulars (N. C. p. 689): that in the first he contradicts the judgment of scholars on the sense of the original; in the second he both misquotes (by inadvertence) the terms of the text, and overlooks the distinction made so palpable (if not earlier) half a century ago, by the work of Dr. Buckland, between bara and asa; while the third proceeds on the assumption that there could be no light to produce vegetation, except light derived from a visible sun. These three charges constitute the head and front of M. Réville's indictment against the cosmogony; and the fatal flaws in them, without any notice or defense, are now all taken under the mantle of our science proctor, who returns to the charge at the close of his article (p. 459), and again dismisses with comprehensive honor as "wise and moderate" what he had ushered in as reverent and just. So much for the sweeping, undiscriminating character of an advocacy which, in a scientific writer, we might perhaps have expected to be carefully limited and defined.

I take next the exaggeration which appears to me to mark unhappily Professor Huxley's method. Under this head I include all needless multiplication of points of controversy, whether in the form of overstating differences, or understating agreements, with an adversary.

As I have lived for more than half a century in an atmosphere of contention, my stock of controversial fire has perhaps become abnormally low; while Professor Huxley, who has been inhabiting the Elysian regions of science, the edita doctrinâ sapientûm templa serena, may be enjoying all the freshness of an unjaded appetite. Certainly one of the lessons life has taught me is, that where there is known to be a common object, the pursuit of truth, there should also be a studious desire to interpret the adversary in the best sense his words will fairly bear; to avoid whatever widens the breach; and to make the most of whatever tends to narrow it. These I hold to be part of the laws of knightly tournament.

I do not, therefore, fully understand why Professor Huxley makes it a matter of objection to me that, in rebuking a writer who had treated evolution wholesale as a novelty in the world, I cited a few old instances of moral and historical evolution only, and did not extend my front by examining Indian sages and the founders of Greek philosophy (P. S. M. p. 454). Nor why, when I have spoken of physical evolution as of a thing to me most acceptable, but not yet in its rigor (to my knowledge) proved (N. G. p. 705), we have only the rather niggardly acknowledgment that I have made "the most oblique