The book on barnacles being called to the attention of the Censor, that worthy exclaimed, "Some new heresy, I dare say—put it on the 'Index!'" And it was so done.
The success of Doctor James' book reveals the popularity of the form of reasoning that digests the refutation first, and the original proposition not at all.
In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-five, Gladstone in an address at Liverpool said, "Upon the ground of what is called evolution, God is relieved from the labor of creation and of governing the universe."
Herbert Spencer called Gladstone's attention to the fact that Sir Isaac Newton, with his law of gravitation and the physical science of astronomy, was open to the same charge.
Gladstone then took refuge in the "Contemporary Review," and retreated in a cloud of words that had nothing to do with the subject.
Thomas Carlyle, who has facetiously been called a liberal thinker, had not the patience to discuss Darwin's book seriously, but grew red in the face and hissed in falsetto when it was even mentioned. He wrote of Darwin as "the apostle of dirt," and said, "He thinks his grandfather was a chimpanzee, and I suppose he is right—leastwise, I am not the one to deprive him of the honor."
Scathing criticisms were uttered on Darwin's ideas, both on the platform and in print, by Doctor Noah Porter of Yale, Doctor Hodge of Princeton, and Doctor Tayler Lewis of Union College. Agassiz, the man who was regarded as the foremost scientist in America, thought he had to choose between orthodoxy and Darwinism, and he chose orthodoxy. His gifted son tried to rescue his father from the grip of prejudice, and later endeavored to free his name from the charge that he could not change his mind, but alas! Louis Agassiz's words were expressed in print, and widely circulated.
There were two men in America whose names stand out like beacon-lights because they had the courage to speak up loud and clear for Charles Darwin while the pack was baying the loudest. These men were Doctor Asa Gray, who influenced the Appletons to publish an American edition of "The Origin of Species," and Professor Edward L. Youmans, who gave up his own brilliant lecture work in order that he might stand by Darwin, Spencer, Huxley and Wallace.
For the man who was known as "a Darwinian" there was no place in the American Lyceum. Shut out from addressing the public by word of mouth, Youmans founded a magazine that he might express himself, and he fired a monthly broadside from his "Popular Science Monthly." And it is good to remember that the faith of Youmans was not without its reward. He lived to see his periodical grow from a confessed failure—a bill of expense that took his monthly salary to maintain—to a paying property that made its owner passing rich.
Gray, too, outlived the charge of infidelity, and was not forced to resign his position as Professor at Harvard, as was freely prophesied he would.