party?

It is true that if philosophers have suffered, their cause has been
amply avenged. Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every
science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history
records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed,
the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and
crushed if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain. But orthodoxy is the
Bourbon of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it forget;
and though, at present, bewildered and afraid to move, it is as willing
as ever to insist that the first chapter of Genesis contains the
beginning and the end of sound science; and to visit, with such petty
thunderbolts as its half-paralysed hands can hurl, those who refuse to
degrade Nature to the level of primitive Judaism.

Philosophers, on the other hand, have no such aggressive tendencies.
With eyes fixed on the noble goal to which "per aspera et ardua" they
tend, they may, now and then, be stirred to momentary wrath by the
unnecessary obstacles with which the ignorant, or the malicious,
encumber, if they cannot bar, the difficult path; but why should their
souls be deeply vexed? The majesty of Fact is on their side, and the
elemental forces of Nature are working for them. Not a star comes to the
meridian at its calculated time but testifies to the justice of their
methods--their beliefs are "one with falling rain and with the growing
corn." By doubt they are established, and open inquiry is their bosom
friend. Such men have no fear of traditions however venerable, and no
respect for them when they become mischievous and obstructive; but they
have better than mere antiquarian business in hand, and if dogmas, which
ought to be fossil but are not, are not forced upon their notice, they
are too happy to treat them as non-existent.

The hypotheses respecting the origin of species which profess to stand
upon a scientific basis, and, as such, alone demand serious attention,
are of two kinds. The one, the "special creation" hypothesis, presumes
every species to have originated from one or more stocks, these not
being the result of the modification of any other form of living
matter--or arising by natural agencies--but being produced, as such, by
a supernatural creative act.

The other, the so-called "transmutation" hypothesis, considers that
all existing species are the result of the modification of pre-existing
species, and those