d that their incumbents were bound to sign
Ptolemaic articles. In that case, with every respect for the
efforts of persons thus hampered to attain and expound the truth, I
think men of common sense would go elsewhere to learn astronomy.

I did not write this paragraph without a knowledge that its sense would
be open to the kind of perversion which it has suffered; but, if that
was clear, the necessity for the statement was still clearer. It is my
deliberate opinion: I reiterate it; and I say that, in my judgment, it
is extremely inexpedient that any subject which calls itself a science
should be entrusted to teachers who are debarred from freely following
out scientific methods to their legitimate conclusions, whatever those
conclusions may be. If I may borrow a phrase paraded at the Church
Congress, I think it "ought to be unpleasant" for any man of science to
find himself in the position of such a teacher.

Human nature is not altered by seating it in a professorial chair, even
of theology. I have very little doubt that if, in the year 1859, the
tenure of my office had depended upon my adherence to the doctrines of
Cuvier, the objections to them set forth in the "Origin of Species"
would have had a halo of gravity about them that, being free to teach
what I pleased, I failed to discover. And, in making that statement, it
does not appear to me that I am confessing that I should have been
debarred by "selfish interests" from making candid inquiry, or that I
should have been biassed by "sordid motives." I hope that even such a
fragment of moral sense as may remain in an ecclesiastical "infidel"
might have got me through the difficulty; but it would be unworthy to
deny, or disguise, the fact that a very serious difficulty must have
been created for me by the nature of my tenure. And let it be observed
that the temptation, in my case, would have been far slighter than in
that of a professor of theology; whatever biological doctrine I had
repudiated, nobody I cared for would have thought the worse of me for so
doing. No scientific journals would have howled me down, as the
religious newspapers howled down my too honest friend, the late Bishop
of Natal; nor would my colleagues of the Royal Society have turned their
backs upon me, as his episcopal colleagues boycotted him.

I say these facts are obvious, and, that it is wholesome and needful
that they should be stated. It is in the interests of theology, if it