y
of different rocks and of the fossils (the petrified prehistoric
plants) which they found deep below the surface of the earth. These
investigations convinced them that the earth must be a great deal older
than was stated in the book of Genesis and in the year 1830, Sir Charles
Lyell published his "Principles of Geology" which denied the story
of creation as related in the Bible and gave a far more wonderful
description of slow growth and gradual development.

At the same time, the Marquis de Laplace was working on a new theory of
creation, which made the earth a little blotch in the nebulous sea out
of which the planetary system had been formed and Bunsen and Kirchhoff,
by the use of the spectroscope, were investigating the chemical
composition of the stars and of our good neighbour, the sun, whose
curious spots had first been noticed by Galileo.

Meanwhile after a most bitter and relentless warfare with the clerical
authorities of Catholic and Protestant lands, the anatomists and
physiologists had at last obtained permission to dissect bodies and to
substitute a positive knowledge of our organs and their habits for the
guesswork of the mediaeval quack.

Within a single generation (between 1810 and 1840) more progress was
made in every branch of science than in all the hundreds of thousands of
years that had passed since man first looked at the stars and wondered
why they were there. It must have been a very sad age for the people
who had been educated under the old system. And we can understand
their feeling of hatred for such men as Lamarck and Darwin, who did
not exactly tell them that they were "descended from monkeys," (an
accusation which our grandfathers seemed to regard as a personal
insult,) but who suggested that the proud human race had evolved from
a long series of ancestors who could trace the family-tree back to the
little jelly-fishes who were the first inhabitants of our planet.

The dignified world of the well-to-do middle class, which dominated the
nineteenth century, was willing to make use of the gas or the electric
light, of all the many practical applications of the great scientific
discoveries, but the mere investigator, the man of the "scientific
theory" without whom no progress would be possible, continued to
be distrusted until very recently. Then, at last, his services were
recognised. Today the rich people who in past ages donated their wealth
for the building of a cathedral, construct