The Dawn of Darwinism
One day early in the eighteen hundred and sixties, I, being then a small boy, was with my nurse, buying something in the shop of a petty newsagent, bookseller, and stationer in Camden Street, Dublin, when there entered an elderly man, weighty and solemn, who advanced to the counter, and said pompously, "Have you the works of the celebrated Buffoon?"
My own works were at that time unwritten, or it is possible that the shop assistant might have misunderstood me so far as to produce a copy of Man and Superman. As it was, she knew quite well what he wanted; for this was before the Education Act of 1870 had produced shop assistants who know how to read and know nothing else. The celebrated Buffoon was not a humorist, but the famous naturalist Buifon. Every literate child at that time knew Buffon's Natural History as well as Esop's Fables. And no living child had heard the name that has since obliterated Buffon's in the popular consciousness: the name of Darwin.
Table of Contents
The Infidel Half Century vii; The Dawn of Darwinism vii; The Advent of the Neo-Darwinians ix; Political Inadequacy of the Human Animal x; Cowardice of the Irreligious x; Is there any Hope in Education? xii; Homeopathic Education xiii The Diabolical Efficiency of Technical Education xv; Flimsiness of Civilization xvii; Creative Evolution xvii; Voluntary Longevity xviii; The Early Evolutionists xx; The Advent of the Nco-Lamarckians xxiii; How Acquirements are Inherited xxiv; The Miracle of Condensed Recapitulation xxvi; Heredity an Old Story xxxi; Discovery Anticipated by Divination xxxii Corrected Dates for the Discovery of Evolution xxxiv Defying the Lightning: a Frustrated Experiment xxxvi; In Quest of the First Cause xxxviii; Paley's Watch xl; The Irresistible Cry of Order, Order! xii; The Moment and the Man xliii; The Brink of the Bottomless Pit xlvi; Why Darwin Converted the Crowd xlvii
One day early in the eighteen hundred and sixties, I, being then a small boy, was with my nurse, buying something in the shop of a petty newsagent, bookseller, and stationer in Camden Street, Dublin, when there entered an elderly man, weighty and solemn, who advanced to the counter, and said pompously, "Have you the works of the celebrated Buffoon?"
My own works were at that time unwritten, or it is possible that the shop assistant might have misunderstood me so far as to produce a copy of Man and Superman. As it was, she knew quite well what he wanted; for this was before the Education Act of 1870 had produced shop assistants who know how to read and know nothing else. The celebrated Buffoon was not a humorist, but the famous naturalist Buifon. Every literate child at that time knew Buffon's Natural History as well as Esop's Fables. And no living child had heard the name that has since obliterated Buffon's in the popular consciousness: the name of Darwin.
Table of Contents
The Infidel Half Century vii; The Dawn of Darwinism vii; The Advent of the Neo-Darwinians ix; Political Inadequacy of the Human Animal x; Cowardice of the Irreligious x; Is there any Hope in Education? xii; Homeopathic Education xiii The Diabolical Efficiency of Technical Education xv; Flimsiness of Civilization xvii; Creative Evolution xvii; Voluntary Longevity xviii; The Early Evolutionists xx; The Advent of the Nco-Lamarckians xxiii; How Acquirements are Inherited xxiv; The Miracle of Condensed Recapitulation xxvi; Heredity an Old Story xxxi; Discovery Anticipated by Divination xxxii Corrected Dates for the Discovery of Evolution xxxiv Defying the Lightning: a Frustrated Experiment xxxvi; In Quest of the First Cause xxxviii; Paley's Watch xl; The Irresistible Cry of Order, Order! xii; The Moment and the Man xliii; The Brink of the Bottomless Pit xlvi; Why Darwin Converted the Crowd xlvii
