“Someone will discover some day that Darwin’s conclusions were wrong, that he left out some little near obvious thing with big results, and his theory, which has worried thousands of people nearly to death, will turn out to be one of those everlasting mannish explanations of everything which explain nothing. I know what you are going to say; a subsequent reversal of a doctrine does not invalidate scientific method. I know. But these everlasting theories, and men are so ‘eminent’ and important about them, are appalling; in medicine, it is simply appalling , and people are just as ill as ever; and when they know Darwin was mistaken, there will be an end of Herbert Spencer. There’s my father, really an intelligent man, he has done scientific research himself and knew Faraday, and he thinks First Principles the greatest book that was ever written. I have argued and argued but he says he is too old to change his cosmos. It makes me simply ill to think of him living in a cosmos made by Herbert Spencer.”
“ Wait. Excuse me but that is all too easy. In matter of science the conclusions of Darwin will never be displaced. It is as the alphabet of biology, as Galilei is of Astronomy. More. These researches even need not be made again. They are for all time verified. Herbert Spencer I agree has carried too far in too wholesale a manner conclusions based on Darwin’s discoveries; conclusions may lead to many inapplicable theories, that is immaterial; but Darwin himself made no such theories. There is no question of opinion as to his discoveries; he supplies simply unanswerable facts .”