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164
Glaucus; Or, The Wonders of the Shore
·
Charles Kingsley
26
No
branch
of
science,
moreover,
has
been
more
humbling
to
the
boasted
rapidity
and
omnipotence
of
the
human
reason,
or
has
more
taught
those
who
have
eyes
to
see,
and
hearts
to
understand,
how
weak
and
wayward,
staggering
and
slow,
are
the
steps
of
our
fallen
race
(rapid
and
triumphant
enough
in
that
broad
road
of
theories
which
leads
to
intellectual
destruction)
whensoever
they
tread
the
narrow
path
of
true
science,
which
leads
(if
I
may
be
allowed
to
transfer
our
Lord’s
great
parable
from
moral
to
intellectual
matters)
to
Life;
to
the
living
and
permanent
knowledge
of
living
things
and
of
the
laws
of
their
existence.
Humbling,
truly,
to
one
who
looks
back
to
the
summer
of
1754,
when
good
Mr.
Ellis,
the
wise
and
benevolent
West
Indian
merchant,
read
before
the
Royal
Society
his
paper
proving
the
animal
nature
of
corals,
and
followed
it
up
the
year
after
by
that
“Essay
toward
a
Natural
History
of
the
Corallines,
and
other
like
Marine
Productions
of
the
British
Coasts,”
which
forms
the
groundwork
of
all
our
knowledge
on
the
subject
to
this
day.
The
chapter
in
Dr.
G.
Johnston’s
“British
Zoophytes,”
p.
407,
or
the
excellent
little
résumé
thereof
in
Dr.
Landsborough’s
book
on
the
same
subject,
is
really
a
saddening
one,
as
one
sees
how
loth
were,
not
merely
dreamers
like,
Marsigli
or
Bonnet,
but
sound-headed
men
like
Pallas
and
Linné,
to
give
up
the
old
sense-bound
fancy,
that
these
corals
were
vegetables,
and
their
polypes
some
sort
of
living
flowers.
Yet,
after
all,
there
are
excuses
for
them.
Without
our
improved
microscopes,
and
while
the
sciences
of
comparative
anatomy
and
chemistry
were
yet
infantile,
it
was
difficult
to
believe
what
was
the
truth;
and
for
this
simple
reason:
that,
as
usual,
the
truth,
when
discovered,
turned
out
far
more
startling
and
prodigious
than
the
dreams
which
men
had
hastily
substituted
for
it;
more
strange
than
Ovid’s
old
story
that
the
coral
was
soft
under
the
sea,
and
hardened
by
exposure
to
air;
than
Marsigli’s
notion,
that
the
coral-polypes
were
its
flowers;
than
Dr.
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