been idle. In 1857 the astounding question had for the first time been propounded with contumely,'1 'What, then, did we come from orangoutang?' The famous Vestiges of Creation* had been supplying a sugar-and-water panacea for those who could not escape from the trend of evidence, and who yet clung to revelation. Owen6 was encouraging reaction by resisting, with all the strength of his prestige, the theory of the mutability of species.
In this period of intellectual ferment, as when a great political revolution is being planned, many possible adherents were confidentially tested with hints and encouraged to reveal their bias in a whisper. It was the notion of Lyell, himself a great mover of men, that, before the doctrine of natural selection was given to a world which would be sure to lift up at it a howl of execration, a certain bodyguard of sound and experienced naturalists, expert in the description of species, should be privately made aware of its tenor. Among those who were thus initiated, or approached with a view towards possible illumination, was my Father. He was spoken to by Hooker, and later on by Darwin, after meetings of the Royal Society7 in the summer of 1857.
My Father's attitude towards the theory of natural selection was critical in his career, and oddly enough, it exercised an immense influence on my own experience as a child. Let it be admitted at once, mournful as the admission is, that every instinct in his intelligence went out at first to greet the new light. It had hardly done so, when a recollection of the opening chapter of Genesis checked it at the outset. He consulted with Carpenter,8 a great investigator, but one who was fully as incapable as himself of remodeling his ideas with regard to the old, accepted hypotheses. They both determined, on various grounds, to have nothing to do with the terrible theory, but to hold steadily to the law of the fixity of species.* * *
My Father had never admired Sir Charles Lyell. I think that the famous
Lord Chancellor manner of the geologist intimidated him, and we undervalue
the intelligence of those whose conversation puts us at a disadvantage. For
Darwin and Hooker, on the other hand, he had a profound esteem, and I know
not whether this had anything to do with the fact that he chose, for his impet
uous experiment in reaction, the field of geology, rather than that of zoology
2. Noted scientists: Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker tion'; it asserted that all parts of nature were (1817-1911), British botanist and explorer; Alfred evolving onward and upward toward a greater state Russel Wallace (1823- 1913), British naturalist; of perfection under God's direction. Asa Gray (1810-1888), American botanist; and 6. Sir Richard Owen (1804-1892), a leading Brit- Louis Agassiz (1807?1873), Swiss geologist and ish zoologist and paleontologist who was opposed comparative anatomist. to Darwin's theories. 3. On the Variation of Species, with Especial Ref-7. The Royal Society of London for the Promotion erence to Insecta (1856), by the British entomolo-of Natural Knowledge; founded in 1660, it was an gist Thomas V. Wollaston (1822-1878). important meeting place for independent scien4. Insolent or insulting language or treatment. tists. 5. This popular work of 1843?46 by Robert 8. William B. Carpenter (1813-1885), British Chambers claimed to be 'the first attempt to con-naturalist. nect the natural sciences into a history of crea
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GOSSE: FATHER AND SON / 1555
or botany. Lyell had been threatening to publish a book on the geological history of Man, which was to be a bombshell flung into the camp of the catastrophists. My Father, after long reflection, prepared a theory of his own, which, as he fondly hoped, would take the wind out of Lyell's sails, and justify geology to godly readers of Genesis. It was, very briefly, that there had been no gradual modification of the surface of the earth, or slow development of organic forms, but that when the catastrophic act of creation took place, the world presented, instantly, the structural appearance of a planet on which life had long existed.
The theory, coarsely enough, and to my Father's great indignation, was defined by a hasty press as being this?that God hid the fossils in the rocks in order to tempt geologists into infidelity. In truth, it was the logical and inevitable conclusion of accepting, literally, the doctrine of a sudden act of creation; it emphasized the fact that any breach in the circular course of nature could be conceived only on the supposition that the object created bore false witness to past processes, which had never taken place.
Never was a book cast upon the waters with greater anticipations of success than was this curious, this obstinate, this fanatical volume. My Father lived in a fever of suspense, waiting for the tremendous issue. This Omphalos of his, he thought, was to bring all the turmoil of scientific speculation to a close, fling geology into the arms of Scripture, and make the lion eat grass with the lamb.9 It was not surprising, he admitted, that there had been experienced an ever-increasing discord between the facts which geology brings to light and the direct statements of the early chapters of Genesis. Nobody was to blame for that. My Father, and my Father alone, possessed the secret of the enigma; he alone held the key which could smoothly open the lock of geological mystery. He offered it, with a glowing gesture, to atheists and Christians alike. This was to be the universal panacea; this the system of intellectual therapeutics which could not but heal all the maladies of the age. But, alas! atheists and Christians alike looked at it, and laughed, and threw it away.
In the course of that dismal winter, as the post began to bring in private letters, few and chilly, and public reviews, many and scornful, my Father looked in vain for the approval of the churches, and in vain for the acquiescence of the scientific societies, and in vain for the gratitude of those 'thousands of thinking persons,' which he had rashly assured himself of receiving. As his reconciliation of Scripture statements and geological deductions was welcomed nowhere; as Darwin continued silent, and the youthful Huxley was scornful, and even Charles Kingsley,1 from whom my Father had expected the most instant appreciation, wrote that he coufd not 'give up the painful and slow conclusion of five and twenty years' study of geology, and believe that God has written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie'? as all this happened or failed to happen, a gloom, cold and dismal, descended upon our morning teacups.*' *
c
1907
9. Allusion to the biblical prophecy of a new world (Isaiah 11.6-7). order in which 'the wolf also shall dwell with the 1. Clergyman and novelist (1819-1875). lamb . . . and the lion shall eat straw like the ox'
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1 556 / INDUSTRIALISM: PROGRESS OR DECLINE?
INDUSTRIALISM: PROGRESS OR DECLINE?
In 1835 the French statesman and author Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of Manchester: 'From this foul drain, the greatest stream of human industry flows out to fertilize the whole world. From this filthy sewer pure gold flows. Here humanity attains its most complete development and its most brutish, here civilization works its miracles and civilized man is turned almost into a savage.' De Tocqueville's graphic sense of the wealth and the wretchedness
