THE LAST HALF-CENTURY.
[To THR EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.']
your review of Mr. Churton Collins's "Illustrations of Tennyson," in the Spectator of December 12th, you call the past half-century "an era in which there has been an un- equalled discovery of natural laws, and consequent trans- formations of our relations with the seen and the unseen, never before experienced by men."
This is almost a commonplace, but is it true ? Is any change in our conception of the universe that can be produced by the -establishment of the law of evolution and all other discoveries of this era put together, equal to that which must have fol- lowed the establishment of the Copernican astronomy, with -its demonstration that the earth is not the centre of the uni- verse, is not at rest, and is possibly, if not probably, one among myriads of worlds P—I am, Sir, [We do not agree with our correspondent. No discovery of law affecting chiefly inorganic matter ever produced at all the impression which the discovery (or, at all events, supposed dis- -covery) of a law governing the evolution of life and mind has produced on those who accept it.—En. Spectator.]
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