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Goethe was then still living; and a French friend of his called
on him and found him wildly excited. 'What do you think of the great
event?' said Goethe. 'The volcano is in eruption; and all is in flames.
There can no longer be discussion with closed doors.' The Frenchman
replied that no doubt it was a terrible business; but what could they
expect with such a ministry and such a king? 'Stuff!' said Goethe: 'I
am not thinking of these people at all, but of the open rupture in
the French Academy between Cuvier and St Hilaire. It is of the utmost
importance to science,' The rupture Goethe meant was about Evolution,
Cuvier contending that there were four species, and St Hilaire that
there was only one.
From 1830, when Darwin was an apparently unpromising lad of twenty-one,
until 1859, when he turned the world upside down by his Origin of
Species, there was a slump in Evolutionism. The first generation of its
enthusiasts was ageing and dying out; and their successors were being
taught from the Book of Genesis, just as Edward VI was (and Edward VII
too, for that matter).


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