While confessing his own inability to accept fully the
new scientific belief, he said: "We should consider it disgraceful
and humiliating to try to shake it by an _ad captandum_ argument, or
by a clap-trap platform appeal to the unfathomable ignorance and
unlimited arrogance of a prejudiced assembly. We should blush to
meet it with an anathema or a sneer."
All opposition had availed nothing; Darwin's work and fame were
secure. As men looked back over his beautiful life--simple, honest,
tolerant, kindly--and thought upon his great labours in the search
for truth, all the attacks faded into nothingness.
There were indeed some dark spots, which as time goes on appear
darker. At Trinity College, Cambridge, Whewell, the "omniscient,"
author of the _History of the Inductive Sciences_, refused to allow
a copy of the _Origin of Species_ to be placed in the library. At
multitudes of institutions under theological control--Protestant as
well as Catholic--attempts were made to stamp out or to stifle
evolutionary teaching.
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