America has had but four men of unmistakable originality. These are: Franklin, Emerson, Whitman and Edison. Each worked in a field particularly his own, and the genius of each was recognized in Europe before we were willing to acknowledge it here. But the word "scientist" can hardly be properly applied to any of these men. For want of a better name we call John Fiske our greatest scientist. He was the most learned man of his day. In the realm of Physical Geography no American could approach him. The combined knowledge of everybody else was his: he had a passion for facts, a memory like a daybook, and his systematic mind was disciplined until it was a regular Dewey card-index.
Louis Agassiz was born in Europe, but he was ours by adoption, and he might dispute with Fiske the title to first place in the American Pantheon of Science, were it not for the fact that the Law of Evolution was beyond his ken, being obscured by a marked, myopic, theological, stigmatic squint.
Agassiz died in his sins, unconvinced unrepentant, refusing the rite of extreme unction that Asa Gray offered him, his sensitive spirit writhing at mention of the word "Darwin." On his tomb, Clio with moving finger has carved one of his own sentences, nor all your tears shall blot a line of it. And these are the words of Agassiz: "Darwinism seeks to dethrone God, and replace Him by a blind force called the Law of Evolution." So passed away the great soul of Louis Agassiz.
Fiske has been called the Huxley of America; but Fiske was like Agassiz in this, he never had the felicity to achieve the ill-will of the many. Fiske has also been called the Drummond of America, but Fiske was really a Henry Drummond and a Louis Agassiz rolled into one, the mass well seasoned with essence of Huxley. John Fiske made the science of Darwin and Wallace palatable to orthodox theology, and it is to the earnest and eloquent words of Fiske that we owe it that Evolution is taught everywhere in the public schools and even in the sectarian colleges of America today.
The almost universal opposition to Darwin's book arose from the idea that its acceptance would destroy the Christian religion. This was the plaintive plea put forth when Newton advanced his discovery of the Law of Gravitation, and also when Copernicus proclaimed the movements of the earth: these things were contrary to the Bible! Copernicus was a loyal Catholic; Sir Isaac Newton was a staunch Churchman; but both kept their religion in water-tight compartments, so that it never got mixed with their science. Gladstone never allowed his religion to tint his statesmanship, and we all know businessmen who follow the double-entry scheme.
That famous French toast, "Here's to our wives and sweethearts—may they never meet!" would suit most lawyers just as well if expressed this way. "Here's to our religion and our business—God knows they never meet."
To Sir Isaac Newton, religion was something to be believed, not understood. He left religion to the specialists, recognizing its value as a sort of police protection for the State, and as his share in the matter he paid tithes, and attended prayers as a matter of patriotic duty and habit.
Voltaire recognized the greatness of Newton's intellect, but he could not restrain his aqua fortis, and so he said this: "All the scientists were jealous of Newton when he discovered the Law of Gravitation, but they got even with him when he wrote his book on the Hebrew Prophecies!" Newton wrote that book in his water-tight compartment.
But Newton was no hypocrite. The attitude of the Primrose Sphinx who bowed his head in the Church of England Chapel—the Jew who rose to the highest office Christian England had to offer—and repeated Ben Ezra's prayer, was not the attitude of Newton. Darwin waived religion, and if he ever heard of the Bible no one knew it from his writings.
Huxley danced on it. Tyndall and Spencer regarded the Bible as a valuable and more or less interesting collection of myths, fables and folklore tales. Wallace sees in it a strain of prophetic truth and regards it as gold-bearing quartz of a low grade.