I submit that there are few questions before the men of the rising generation, on the answer to which the future hangs more fatally, than this.  We are at the parting of the ways.  Whether the twentieth century shall see a recrudescence of the superstitions of mediaeval papistry, or whether it shall witness the severance of the living body of the ethical ideal of prophetic Israel from the carcase, foul with savage superstitions and cankered with false philosophy, to which the theologians have bound it, turns upon their final judgment of the Gadarene tale.

The gravity of the problems ultimately involved in the discussion of the legend of Gadara will, I hope, excuse a persistence in returning to the subject, to which I should not have been moved by merely personal considerations.

With respect to the diluvial invective which overflowed thirty-three pages of the “Nineteenth Century” last January, I doubt not that it has a catastrophic importance in the estimation of its author.  I, on the other hand, may be permitted to regard it as a mere spate; noisy and threatening while it lasted, but forgotten almost as soon as it was over.  Without my help, it will be judged by every instructed and clear-headed reader; and that is fortunate, because, were aid necessary, I have cogent reasons for withholding it.

In an article characterised by the same qualities of thought and diction, entitled “A Great Lesson,” which appeared in the “Nineteenth Century” for September 1887, the Duke of Argyll, firstly, charged the whole body of men of science, interested in the question, with having conspired to ignore certain criticisms of Mr. Darwin’s theory of the origin of coral reefs; and, secondly, he asserted that some person unnamed had “actually induced” Mr. John Murray to delay the publication of his views on that subject “for two years.”

It was easy for me and for others to prove that the first statement was not only, to use the Duke of Argyll’s favourite expression, “contrary to fact,” but that it was without any foundation whatever.  The second statement rested on the Duke of Argyll’s personal authority.  All I could do was to demand the production of the evidence for it.  Up to the present time, so far as I know, that evidence has not made its appearance; nor has there been any withdrawal of, or apology for, the erroneous charge.

Under these circumstances most people will understand why the Duke of Argyll may feel quite secure of having the battle all to himself, whenever it pleases him to attack me.

[See the note at the end of “Hasisadra’s Adventure” (vol iv. p. 283).  The discussion on coral reefs, at the meeting of the British Association this year, proves that Mr. Darwin’s views are defended now, as strongly as in 1891, by highly competent authorities.  October 25, 1893.]

FOOTNOTES: 

    [107] Nineteenth Century, February 1891, pp. 339-40.