Such being our habitual state of mind, it may well be believed that
the perusal of the new book "On the Origin of Species by Means of
Natural Selection" left an uncomfortable impression, in spite of its
plausible and winning ways. We were not wholly unprepared for it, as
many of our contemporaries seem to have been. The scientific reading
in which we indulge as a relaxation from severer studies had raised
dim forebodings. Investigations about the succession of species in
time, and their actual geographical distribution over the earth's
surface, were leading up from all sides and in various ways to the
question of their origin. Now and then we encountered a sentence,
like Professor Owen's "axiom of the continuous operation of the
ordained becoming of living things," which haunted us like an
apparition. For, dim as our conception must needs be as to what such
oracular and grandiloquent phrases might really mean, we felt
confident that they presaged no good to old beliefs. Foreseeing, yet
deprecating, the coming time of trouble, we still hoped, that, with
some repairs and make-shifts, the old views might last out our days.
_Apres nous le deluge_.
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