"Mr. Darwin's long-standing and well-earned scientific eminence probably renders him indifferent to that social notoriety which
passes by the name of success; but if the calm spirit of the philosopher have not yet wholly superseded the ambition and the vanity
of the carnal man within him, he must be well satisfied with the results of his venture in publishing the "Origin of Species."
Overflowing the narrow bounds of purely scientific circles, the "species question" divides with Italy and the Volunteers the attention
of general society. Everybody has read Mr. Darwin's book, or, at least, has given an opinion upon its merits or demerits; pietists,
whether lay or ecclesiastic, decry it with the mild railing which sounds so charitable; bigots denounce it with ignorant invective; old
ladies of both sexes consider it a [23] decidedly dangerous book, and even savants, who have no better mud to throw, quote
antiquated writers to show that its author is no better than an ape himself; while every philosophical thinker hails it as a veritable
Whitworth gun in the armoury of liberalism; and all competent naturalists and physiologists, whatever their opinions as to the
ultimate fate of the doctrines put forth, acknowledge that the work in which they are embodied is a solid contribution to knowledge
and inaugurates a new epoch in natural history...
-The T.H. Huxley File
Who shall number the patient and
earnest seekers after truth, from the days of Galileo until now, whose lives have been embittered and their good name blasted by the
mistaken zeal of Bibliolaters? Who shall count the host of weaker men whose sense of truth has been destroyed in the effort to
harmonise impossibilities–whose life has been wasted in the attempt to force the generous new wine of Science into the old bottles
of Judaism, compelled by the outcry of the same strong party?
It is true that if philosophers have suffered, their cause has been amply avenged. Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain. But orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it forget; and though, at present, bewildered and afraid to move, it is as willing as ever to insist that the first chapter of Genesis contains the beginning and the end of sound science; and to visit, with such petty [53] thunderbolts as its half-paralysed hands can hurl, those who refuse to degrade Nature to the level of primitive Judaism."
It is true that if philosophers have suffered, their cause has been amply avenged. Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain. But orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it forget; and though, at present, bewildered and afraid to move, it is as willing as ever to insist that the first chapter of Genesis contains the beginning and the end of sound science; and to visit, with such petty [53] thunderbolts as its half-paralysed hands can hurl, those who refuse to degrade Nature to the level of primitive Judaism."
-The T.H. Huxley File
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