POSTSCRIPT.
My best thanks are due to Mr. Gladstone for his courteous withdrawal of one of the statements to which I have thought it needful to take exception. The familiarity with controversy, to which Mr. Gladstone alludes, will have accustomed him to the misadventures which arise when, as sometimes will happen in the heat of fence, the buttons come off the foils. I trust that any scratch which he may have received will heal as quickly as my own flesh wounds have done.
A contribution to the last number of this Review (The Nineteenth Century) of a different order would be left unnoticed, were it not that my silence would convert me into an accessory to misrepresentations of a very grave character. However, I shall restrict myself to the barest possible statement of facts, leaving my readers to draw their own conclusions.
In an article entitled "A Great Lesson," published in this Review for September, 1887:
(1) The Duke of Argyll says the "overthrow of Darwin's speculations" (p. 301) concerning the origin of coral reefs, which he fancied had taken place, had been received by men of science "with a grudging silence as far as public discussion is concerned" (p. 301).
The truth is that, as every one acquainted with the literature of the subject was well aware, the views supposed to have effected this overthrow had been fully and publicly discussed by Dana in the United States; by Geikie, Green, and Prestwich in this country; by Lapparent in France; and by Credner in Germany.
(2) The Duke of Argyll says "that no serious reply has ever been attempted" (p. 305).
The truth is that the highest living authority on the subject, Professor Dana, published a most weighty reply, two years before the Duke of Argyll committed himself to this statement.
(3) The Duke of Argyll uses the preceding products of defective knowledge, multiplied by excessive imagination, to illustrate the manner in which "certain accepted opinions" established "a sort of Reign of Terror in their own behalf" (p. 307).
The truth is that no plea, except that of total ignorance of the literature of the subject, can excuse the errors cited, and that the "Reign of Terror" is a purely subjective phenomenon.
(4) The letter in "Nature" for the 17th of November, 1887, to which I am referred, contains neither substantiation, nor retractation, of statements 1 and 2. Nevertheless, it repeats number 3. The Duke of Argyll says of his article that it "has done what I intended it to do. It has called wide attention to the influence of mere authority in establishing erroneous theories and in retarding the progress of scientific truth."
(5) The Duke of Argyll illustrates the influence of his fictitious "Reign of Terror" by the statement that Mr. John Murray "was strongly advised against the publication of his views in derogation of Darwin's long-accepted theory of the coral islands, and was actually induced to delay it for two years" (p.307). And in "Nature" for the 17th November, 1887, the Duke of Argyll states that he has seen a letter from Sir Wyville Thomson in which he "urged and almost insisted that Mr. Murray should withdraw the reading of his papers on the subject from the Royal Society of Edinburgh. This was in February, 1877." The next paragraph, however, contains the confession: "No special reason was assigned." The Duke of Argyll proceeds to give a speculative opinion that "Sir Wyville dreaded some injury to the scientific reputation of the body of which he was the chief." Truly, a very probable supposition; but as Sir Wyville Thomson's tendencies were notoriously anti-Darwinian, it does not appear to me to lend the slightest justification to the Duke of Argyll's insinuation that the Darwinian "terror" influenced him. However, the question was finally set at rest by a letter which appeared in "Nature" (29th of December, 1887), in which the writer says that:
"talking with Sir Wyville about 'Murray's new theory,' I asked what objection he had to its being brought before the public? The answer simply was: he considered that the grounds of the theory had not, as yet, been sufficiently investigated or sufficiently corroborated, and that therefore any immature dogmatic publication of it would do less than little service either to science or to the author of the paper."
Sir Wyville Thomson was an intimate friend of mine, and I am glad to have been afforded one more opportunity of clearing his character from the aspersions which have been so recklessly cast upon his good sense and his scientific honour.
(6) As to the "overthrow" of Darwin's theory, which, according to the Duke of Argyll, was patent to every unprejudiced person four years ago, I have recently become acquainted with a work, in which a really competent authority, 14 thoroughly acquainted with all the new lights which have been thrown upon the subject during the last ten years, pronounces the judgment; firstly, that some of the facts brought forward by Messrs. Murray and Guppy against Darwin's theory are not facts; secondly, that the others are reconcilable with Darwin's theory; and, thirdly, that the theories of Messrs. Murray and Guppy "are contradicted by a series of important facts" (p. 13).
Perhaps I had better draw attention to the circumstance that Dr. Langenbeck writes under shelter of the guns of the fortress of Strasburg; and may therefore be presumed to be unaffected by those dreams of a "Reign of Terror" which seem to disturb the peace of some of us in these islands (April, 1891).
[See, on the subject of this note, the essay entitled "An Episcopal Trilogy" in the following volume.]
FOOTNOTES:
1 (return)
[ In May 1849 the Tigris at
Bagdad rose 22-1/2 feet—5 feet above its usual rise—and nearly
swept away the town. In 1831 a similarly exceptional flood did immense
damage, destroying 7000 houses. See Loftus, Chaldea and Susiana, p.
7.]
2 (return)
[ See the instructive chapter
on Hasisadra's flood in Suess, Das Antlitz der Erde, Abth. I. Only
fifteen years ago a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal gave rise to a flood
which covered 3000 square miles of the delta of the Ganges, 3 to 45 feet
deep, destroying 100,000 people, innumerable cattle, houses, and trees. It
broke inland on the rising ground of Tipperah, and may have swept a vessel
from the sea that far, though I do not know that it did.]
3 (return)
[ See Cernik's maps in Petermanns
Mittheilungen, Erganzungashefte 44 and 45, 1875-76.]
4 (return)
[ I have not cited the
dimensions given to the ships in most translations of the story, because
there appears to be a doubt about them. Haupt (Keilinschriftliche
Sindfluth-Bericht, p. 13: says that the figures are illegible.)]
5 (return)
[ It is probable that a slow
movement of elevation of the land at one time contributed to the result—perhaps
does so still.]
6 (return)
[ At a comparatively recent
period, the littoral margin of the Persian Gulf extended certainly 250
miles farther to the northwest than the present embouchure of the Shatt-el
Arab. (Loftus, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 1853,
p. 251.) The actual extent of the marine deposit inland cannot be defined,
as it is covered by later fluviatile deposits.]
7 (return)
[ Tiele (Babylonisch-Assyrische
Geschicthe, pp. 572-3) has some very just remarks on this aspect of
the epos.]
8 (return)
[ In the second volume of the
History of the Euphrates, p. 637 Col. Chesney gives a very
interesting account of the simple and rapid manner in which the people
about Tekrit and in the marshes of Lemlum construct large barges, and make
them water-tight with bitumen. Doubtless the practice is extremely ancient
and as Colonel Chesney suggests, may possibly have furnished the
conception of Noah's ark. But it is one thing to build a barge 44ft. long
by 11ft. wide and 4ft. deep in the way described; and another to get a
vessel of ten times the dimensions, so constructed, to hold together.]
9 (return)
[ "Es ist nichts
schrecklicher als eine thatige Unwissenheit," Maximen und Reflexionen,
iii.]
10 (return)
[ The well-known
difficulties connected with this case have recently been carefully
discussed by Mr. Bell in the Transactions of the Geological Society
of Glasgow.]
11 (return)
[ An instructive parallel
is exhibited by the "Great Basin" of North America. See the remarkable
memoir on Lake Bonneville by Mr. G. K. Gilbert, of the United
States Geological Survey, just published.]
12 (return)
[ It is true that
earthquakes are common enough, but they are incompetent to produce such
changes as those which have taken place.]
13 (return)
[ See Teller, Geologische
Beschreibung des sud-ostlichen Thessalien; Denkschriften d. Akademie
der Wissenschaften, Wien, Bd. xl. p. 199.]
14 (return)
[ Dr. Langenbeck, Die
Theorien uber die Entstehung der Korallen-Inseln und Korallen-Riffe
(p. 13), 1890.]
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