pposed to be waiting for the signal of
"revolt," which some fiery spirits among these young men are to raise
before I dare express my real opinions concerning questions about
which we older men had to fight, in the teeth of fierce public
opposition and obloquy--of something which might almost justify even
the grandiloquent epithet of a Reign of Terror--before our excellent
successors had left school.

It would appear that the spirit of pseudo-science has impregnated even
the imagination of the Duke of Argyll. The scientific imagination
always restrains itself within the limits of probability.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] _Nineteenth Century_, March, 1887.

[21] The Duke of Argyll speaks of the recent date of the
demonstration of the fallacy of the doctrine in
question. "Recent" is a relative term, but I may
mention that the question is fully discussed in my book
on _Hume_; which, if I may believe my publishers, has
been read by a good many people since it appeared in
1879. Moreover, I observe, from a note at page 89 of
_The Reign of Law_, a work to which I shall have
occasion to advert by and by, that the Duke of Argyll
draws attention to the circumstance that, so long ago
as 1866, the views which I hold on this subject were
well known. The Duke, in fact, writing about this time,
says, after quoting a phrase of mine: "The question of
miracles seems now to be admitted on all hands to be
simply a question of evidence." In science, we think
that a teacher who ignores views which have been
discussed _coram populo_ for twenty years, is hardly up
to the mark.

[22] See also vol. i. p. 460. In the ninth edition (1853),
published twenty-three years after the first. Lyell
deprives even the most careless reader of any excuse
for misunderstanding him: "So in regard to subterranean
movements, the theory of the perpetual uniformity of
the force which they exert on the earth-crust is quite
consistent with the admission of their alternate
development and suspension for indefinite periods
within limited geographical areas" (p. 187).

[23] A great many years ago (Presidential Address to the
Geological Society, 1869) I ventured to indicate that
which see