sion, which was the sole object of Réville's attack, and the main object of my defense; and which is the largest portion of the whole subject. Will Mr. Huxley venture to say that Cuvier is an unavailable authority, or that Herschel and Whewell are other than great and venerable names, with reference to the cosmogony? Yet he has quietly set them aside without notice; and they with many more are inclusively bespattered with the charges, which he has launched against the pestilent tribe of Reconcilers.
My fourth and last observation on the "method" of Professor Huxley is that, after discussing a part, and that not the most considerable part, of the Proem of Genesis, he has broadly pronounced upon the whole. This is a mode of reasoning which logic rejects, and which I presume to savor more of license than of science. The fourfold succession is condemned with argument; the cosmogony is thrown into the bargain. True, Mr. Huxley refers in a single sentence to three detached points of it partially touched in my observations (p. 453). But all my argument, the chief argument of my paper, leads up to the nebular or rotatory hypothesis (N. C. 689-94 and 697-8). This hypothesis, with the authorities cited—of whom one is the author of "Vestiges of the Creation"—is inclusively condemned, and without a word vouchsafed to it.
I shall presently express my gratitude for the scientific part of Mr. Huxley's paper. But there are two sides to the question. The whole matter at issue is, 1, a comparison between the probable meaning of the Proem to Genesis and the results of cosmological and geological science; 2, the question whether this comparison favors or does not favor the belief that an element of divine knowledge—knowledge which was not accessible to the simple action of the human faculties—is conveyed to us in this Proem. It is not enough to be accurate in one term of a comparison, unless we are accurate in both. A master of English may speak the vilest and most blundering French. I do not think Mr. Huxley has even endeavored to understand what is the idea, what is the intention, which his opponent ascribes to the Mosaic writer; or what is the conception which his opponent forms of the weighty word Revelation. He holds the writer responsible for scientific precision: I look for nothing of the kind, but assign to him a statement general, which admits exceptions; popular, which aims mainly at producing moral impressions; summary, which can not but be open to more or less of criticism in detail. He thinks it is a lecture. I think it is a sermon. He describes living creatures by structure. The Mosaic writer describes them by habitat. Both I suppose are right. I suppose that description by habitat would be unavailing for the purposes of science. I feel sure that description by structure, such as the geologists supply, would have been unavailing for the purpose of summary teaching with religious aim. Of Revelation I will speak by-and-by.
