Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/349

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Suppose, in all sober sadness, an inquirer knowing nothing more of Darwin than what he might learn out of "Lessons from Nature." Would he not go away with the impression that our great English naturalist had done little beyond launching a "puerile hypothesis," and had played a very unimportant—and, if anything, rather injurious—part in the development of biological science? Yet every candid critic must admit that, were the theory of natural selection superseded to-morrow, to Darwin would still belong the merit of effecting in natural history a transformation as signal as that wrought in astronomy by Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler, or in chemistry by Lavoisier; of bestowing upon zoölogy and botany a definite purpose and a direction for research such as before were wanting. His works would still remain a treasury of observations and of suggestions, and the impulse he has given to the science would never die away. In England, Germany, America, naturalists have sprung up as if by magic in obedience to his spell, and Mr. Mivart himself can hardly be excluded from their number.

We need scarcely add that a critic unjust to persons will not be much more trustworthy as regards their discoveries and their doctrines. The evidence in favor of natural selection—and indeed of evolution altogether—is strictly cumulative, and as such, whatever weight it may carry to the patient and dispassionate inquirer, it is peculiarly open to the attacks of an opponent at one skillful and unscrupulous. We do not, of course, mean to accuse Mr. Mivart of deliberate unscrupulousness. We all know the words—in themselves literally reeking with hypocrisy—in which "the Church" pronounced sentence of death on Giordano Bruno: "Ut quam clementissime et citra sanguinis effusionem puniretur" (Let him be punished as leniently as may be, and without shedding blood). Yet even on that occasion we should be reluctant to declare that the judges were sinning against better light and knowledge. Just so here: Mr. Mivart doubtless believes and feels what he says, and considers his own line of criticism fair and honorable. We know that man is an adept in self-delusion, and of all men the metaphysician who has cultivated the art s'égarer avec méthode (of going astray methodically) is most likely to go unconsciously astray.

We come now to a most painful subject, which, indeed, we would gladly pass over were not its consideration absolutely imperative. Mr. Mivart complains that in one particular instance Mr. Darwin departs from his ordinary courtesy to opponents. We are therefore justified in assuming that he regards courtesy to opponents as a duty—at least in others. Bearing in mind this circumstance, we turn to