Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/346

318 the controversy began was the sworn lover of freedom. Hence it came about that Geology, the science which deals not in warm life and lovely colours, but in mud and stones and bones and old refuse, obtained a predominance and a publicity which it could not otherwise easily have secured. Persons of candid mind would naturally wish to hear both sides of an exciting question. Persons of pre-occupied mind would still sometimes wish to see for themselves what nonsense the geologists were writing. Of course it was foolish of them, for if a man has made up what he calls his mind he ought never to hear the other side. But anyhow, through wisdom or through folly, by degrees the light of truth was enabled to penetrate some of the darkest corners of prejudice, and the process still continues.

For truth to win any lasting and valuable victory, it is essential that contradictory opinions should be brought face to face. Facts so opposed that they cannot be true together should be confronted one with another, and the antagonism of each to each made manifest and expressly declared. Now, the men of science, with rare exceptions, make no claim from the scientific point of view to know what goes on in Heaven or in Hades; but, as I understand the matter, they are modestly certain that our globe has lasted for hundreds of thousands of years; that within the human period the whole of its surface has never been submerged at once; that no human being ever lived to the age of nine hundred years; that the human species began quite otherwise than with an abruptly created pair; that no woman was ever formed of a rib taken from the side of a man; that no serpent ever spoke with human voice to tempt a woman, or for any other purpose; that no warrior, however noble or sacred his cause, ever stayed for a single instant the cosmical motion of earth, or moon, or sun; that the rainbow has exhibited the colours of the solar spectrum to living eyes capable of perceiving them in absolute independence of any terrestrial inundation, past or future; and that the diversity of human languages, due to causes still in operation, has been the result of gradual divergence, not of any sudden supernatural intervention. But again, as I understand the matter, a large body of our pastors and masters, of men who have a prescriptive right and a splendid vantage-ground for teaching morality and religion, deny in these respects what the