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C. 4004 (In the Garden of Eden)
The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas: Present Day
The Thing Happens: A.D. 2170
Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman: A.D. 3000
As Far as Thought Can Reach: A.D. 31,920


PREFACE
The Infidel Half Century

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 Buffon. Every literate child
at that time knew Buffon's Natural History as well as Esop's Fables.


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