Abstract
MAY I ask your correspondents who have been good enough to read my article on “Darwin's Theory of Coral Islands,” published in the September number of the Nineteenth Century, to begin addressing themselves to the merits of the scientific question there dealt with, and to cease wasting their own time and your space upon scolding me for a few words—perhaps exaggerated—respecting the wide-spread reluctance to question any theory advanced by Charles Darwin? I have already explained in your columns the sense in which I spoke, and, subject to that explanation, I have nothing to retract. I observe in Prof. Tait's notice of Dr. Balfour Stewart, published in your latest issue, a passage which shows that this very eminent man of science speaks in a tone very similar of certain “advanced” geologists who “ignore” views which “tend to dethrone” their own “pet theories.” Moreover, since I last addressed you in explanation, I have observed the remarkable passage (“Darwin's Life,” vol. ii. p. 186) in which my censor, Prof. Huxley, positively blasphemes against no less a distinguished body of scientific men than the French Institute for their conduct towards evolutionism. He speaks of the “ill-will of powerful members of that body producing for a long time the effect of a conspiracy of silence.” This is the very same expression which I used, but without the offensive aggravations added by Prof. Huxley.
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ARGYLL “A Conspiracy of Silence”. Nature 37, 246 (1888). https://doi.org/10.1038/037246a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/037246a0
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