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If we dreaded and mistrusted the priest, we could at least keep him out of the house; but what of the modern Darwinist surgeon whom we dread and mistrust ten times more, but into whose hands we must all give ourselves from time to time?
"So then, you, a Darwinist who hold it as a scientific doctrine that only the slow action of environment can transform species and individuals, believe that a poor worn-out, jog-trotting race is going to revive suddenly, in a few years! Can a Darwinist believe in a revolutionizing miracle?" "Previously, no; but now he can." "My dear fellow! How so?"
The highest vertebrates, and especially mankind, are the best proof of this assertion. As to the intellectual faculty, while every Darwinist will agree with Darwin that it is the most powerful arm in the struggle for life, and the most powerful factor of further evolution, he also will admit that intelligence is an eminently social faculty.
Skovorodnikoff was a materialist, a Darwinist, and considered every manifestation of abstract morality, or, worse still, piety, not only as contemptible and absurd but as an affront to his person. All this bustle about a fallen girl, and the presence there in the Senate of her famous counsel and Nekhludoff himself, was to him simply disgusting.
To judge of the interest it is only necessary to remark that Agassiz and Gray were the two leading disputants, the first taking ground against Darwin, the other in his favor. Wright was a Darwinist from the very beginning, explaining the theory in private conversation from a master's point of view, and soon writing upon it in the "North American Review" and in other publications.
Henry Adams was Darwinist because it was easier than not, for his ignorance exceeded belief, and one must know something in order to contradict even such triflers as Tyndall and Huxley. By rights, he should have been also a Marxist but some narrow trait of the New England nature seemed to blight socialism, and he tried in vain to make himself a convert.
And bear in mind that the most enthusiastic Darwinist is forced to admit that there are still rigid partitions between the lower and higher organisms that have not been pierced by the light of scientific truth, but they assume that future discoveries and investigations will solve the difficulty.
Adams was content to read Darwin, especially his "Origin of Species" and his "Voyage of the Beagle." He was a Darwinist before the letter; a predestined follower of the tide; but he was hardly trained to follow Darwin's evidences.
His brother-in-law Murray is just as bad, never goes near the church, and is always poking fun at us who do. The professor is a full-fledged German Darwinist, and believes in nothing that I know of, unless it is himself. Esther took to society, and I'm told by my young people that she was one of the best waltzers in town until she gave it up for painting and dinners.
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