have been to his credit to retract it? How else have the truths of science and the laws of Nature been established, except by righting wrong conclusions, committing mistakes and then correcting them, and escaping from erroneous opinions by showing them to be false? This is the essential method, and the constant work of science, and it is exactly here that it becomes the antagonist of that method which tacitly or openly affirms infallibility of belief, and holds it to be a reproach and a disgrace to acknowledge that one has ever been mistaken. If there had been no revolt against this spirit, we should never have had any such thing as science.
We dismiss this much-landed book with one more illustration of its quality. Having got through the sixth lecture, still devoted to his main thesis the deduction of immortality from protoplasm—Mr. Cook pointed the moral of the occasion in the following characteristic way. He said: "Here is the last white and mottled bird that flew to us out of the tall Tribune tower; and softly folded under its wing are these words concerning Darwin, from Thomas Carlyle, at his own fireside in London." He then read the sensational story that has for some time past been going the rounds of the newspapers about Carlyle's declaring the Darwins to be "atheists all," with some stupid rant about the gospel of dirt, and men coming from monkeys and frog-spawn, and winding up with his standing on the brink of eternity and reviving the lessons of his catechism. Mr. Cook then calls impressively upon "Boston, and the New England colleges, and all tender and thoughtful souls, to listen to Thomas Carlyle as he stands on the brink of eternity."
Now, we never doubted that this representation, so greedily caught by press and pulpit, was essentially a lie. Not that Mr. Carlyle may not have included Darwinism among the multitudinous modern things that he has been wont to rave about, but this circumstantial statement had all the internal evidence of fabrication and falsehood. Mr. Cook says it was an "extract from a letter from Carlyle, published in Scotland, and quoted in the London Times." Yet long before Mr. Cook published his book the story was contradicted in that journal "on the best authority." The "Monday lectureship" was, however, "abreast of the times" only for the purpose of circulating the scandal. The following note, printed in the London Times of January 20, 1877, neither appears in the "Biology," nor, so far as we have observed, has appeared in the American newspapers which gave such swift passport to the first statement:
MR. CARLYLE ON DARWINISM.
"L." writes: "Allow me to state on the best authority that the letter about Darwin and his doctrines, which was quoted in the Times on the 17th inst. from the Ardrossan and Saltcoats Herald, was not written by him."
This should have been quite sufficient to stop the story, but some people are incredulous when dirty gossip is to be checked, and demand responsible names. It may, therefore, be proper to say that we happen to have been informed by Herbert Spencer that the note to the Times was communicated by Mrs. Lecky, the wife of the historian, and that she stated to Mr. Spencer before its publication that, while Mr. Carlyle, in pursuance of his practice of never noticing misstatements, would not contradict it himself, he had authorized her to make the contradiction. It thus appears that a party in England forges a libelous letter, in the interest of orthodoxy, which is made to do duty in New England in the same interest, while the solemn adjuration to listen to the libelous forgery is responded to with the usual "applause."
It is the frequent custom of clergymen to characterize much of the work of modern scientific thinkers as "pseudo-
