The
so-called vertebral theory of the skull is said to have been nipped in
the bud in France by the whisper of an academician to his neighbour,
that, in that case, one's head was a "vertebre pensante."),--to say
nothing of the ill-will of other powerful members of the Institut,
produced for a long time the effect of a conspiracy of silence; and
many years passed before the Academy redeemed itself from the reproach
that the name of Darwin was not to be found on the list of its members.
However, an accomplished writer, out of the range of academical
influences, M. Laugel, gave an excellent and appreciative notice of the
'Origin' in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes.' Germany took time to
consider; Bronn produced a slightly Bowdlerized translation of the
'Origin'; and 'Kladderadatsch' cut his jokes upon the ape origin of
man; but I do not call to mind that any scientific notability declared
himself publicly in 1860. (However, the man who stands next to Darwin
in his influence on modern biologists, K.E. von Baer, wrote to me, in
August 1860, expressing his general assent to evolutionist views. His
phrase, "J'ai enonce les memes idees...que M. Darwin" (volume ii.) is
shown by his subsequent writings to mean no more than this.) None of us
dreamed that, in the course of a few years, the strength (and perhaps I
may add the weakness) of "Darwinismus" would have its most extensive
and most brilliant illustrations in the land of learning. If a
foreigner may presume to speculate on the cause of this curious
interval of silence, I fancy it was that one moiety of the German
biologists were orthodox at any price, and the other moiety as
distinctly heterodox. The latter were evolutionists, a priori,
already, and they must have felt the disgust natural to deductive
philosophers at being offered an inductive and experimental foundation
for a conviction which they had reached by a shorter cut. It is
undoubtedly trying to learn that, though your conclusions may be all
right, your reasons for them are all wrong, or, at any rate,
insufficient.

On the whole, then, the supporters of Mr. Darwin's views in 1860 were
numerically extremely insignificant. There is not the slightest doubt
that, if a general council of the Church scientific had been held at
that time, we should have been condemned by an overwhelming majority.
And there is as little doubt that, if such a council gathered now, the
decree would be of an exactly contrary nature. It wo