“I beg your excellency’s pardon,” said Dr. Bresser, “speech and artistic inventions were not originally congenital in mankind. Even to-day a savage could not construct any sort of telegraphic apparatus. All this is the fruit of slow improvement and development.”
“Yes, yes, my dear doctor,” replied the general. “I know ‘development’ is the cant word of the new theory. Still you cannot develop a camel out of a kangaroo, and why does not one at this time see an ape turning into a man?”
I turned to Baron Tilling.
“And what say you? have you heard of Darwin, and do you reckon yourself among his followers or opponents?”
“I have heard a good deal about the matter, countess, but I have formed no judgment on it; for as to the work under discussion, The Origin of Species, I have not read it.”
“I must confess,” said the doctor, “that I have not either.”
“Read it? Well, to be sure, I have not either,” said the Minister.
“Nor I—nor I—nor I,” came from the rest.
“But,” the Minister proceeded, “the subject has been so much spoken of, the cant words of the system ‘fight for existence,’ ‘natural selection,’ ‘evolution,’ etc., are in everybody’s mouth, so that one can form a clear conception of the whole matter and select a side decidedly with its supporters or opponents, to which first class, to be sure, belong only some Hotspurs who love violent changes and are always grasping after effect, while the cool, strictly critical people, who demand proof positive, cannot possibly choose any other than the position of opponents—shared by so many specialists of consideration—a position which, to be sure——”
“That can hardly be positively asserted,” said Tilling, reviewing the whole matter, “unless one knows the position of its supporters. In order to know what the strength of the opposing arguments is, which, as soon as a new idea comes up, are heard shouting in chorus all round it, one must oneself have penetrated into the idea. It is generally the worst and weakest reasons which are repeated by the masses with such unanimity; and on such grounds I do not choose to pass a judgment. When the theory of Copernicus came up, only those who had gone through the labour of following the calculations of Copernicus could see that they were correct: the others, who guided their judgment by the anathemas which were thundered against the new system from Rome——”