224 life
liam Dallam Armes (New York: D. Appleton, 1903), 335 (rational theism); LeConte,
Religion and Science: A Series of Sunday Lectures on the Relation of Natural and Revealed
Religion, or the Truths Revealed in Nature and Scripture(New York: D. Appleton, 1873),
276 (demon). For a typical reference to LeConte’s definition of evolution, see Andrew
Johnson, “Evolution Outlawed by Science [No. 3],”Pentecostal Herald37 (December 9,
1925): 9.
- LeConte,Autobiography, 16–17, 41–44. See also Lester D. Stephens,Joseph
LeConte: Gentle Prophet of Evolution(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
1982); and Timothy Odom Brown, “Joseph LeConte: Prophet of Nature and Child of
Religion” (M.A. thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1977). - Joseph LeConte,Inaugural Address: Delivered in the State House, Dec. 8, 1857,
by Order of the Board of Trustees of the South Carolina College(Columbia, S.C.: R. W.
Gibbes, 1858), 27. See also LeConte, “The Relation of Organic Science to Sociology,”
Southern Presbyterian Review13 (1861): 39–77; LeConte,Autobiography, 290; and
Brown, “Joseph LeConte,” 72. On positivism, see Charles D. Cashdollar,The Transfor-
mation of Theology, 1830–1890: Positivism and Protestant Thought in Britain and America
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). - LeConte,Autobiography, 177; Stephens,Joseph LeConte, 77–78.
- LeConte,Religion and Science, 3, 9–10, 22–24, 28–29, 230–233, 276–277.
LeConte recycled the comment about standing “where the current runs swiftest” in
“Evolution in Relation to Materialism,”Princeton Review, 4th ser., 7 (1881): 149–174.
The reference to being “a reluctant evolutionist” at the time appeared in LeConte,Au-
tobiography, 336. See also Ronald L. Numbers, “Reading the Book of Nature through
American Lenses,” inThe Book of Nature: Continuity and Change in European and
American Attitudes towards the Natural World, ed. Klaas van Berkel et al. (Leuven, Bel-
gium: Peeters, in press). - Joseph LeConte, “On Critical Periods in the History of the Earth and Their
Relation to Evolution,”American Journal of Science114 (1877): 99–114, quotation on
101; LeConte,Autobiography, 266 (most important), 336 (thorough and enthusiastic;
woe is me): LeConte, “Evolution in Relation to Religion,”Proceedings at the Annual
Dinner of the Chit-Chat Club, San Francisco, 1877, 1–12, quoted in Stephens,Joseph
LeConte, 165; LeConte,Evolution and Its Relation to Religious Thought, a second edition
of which appeared under the titleEvolution: Its Nature, Evidences, and Relation to Reli-
gious Thought(New York: D. Appleton, 1896). See also LeConte’s pamphlet,The Rela-
tion of Evolution to Religious Thought(San Francisco: Pacific Coast Conference of Uni-
tarian and other Christian Churches, 1887). - LeConte,Religion and Science, 233 (difficulty and distress); LeConte, “Man’s
Place in Nature,”Princeton Review, 4th ser., 2 (1878): 789 (dearly cherished); LeConte,
“Evolution in Relation to Materialism,” 159–160 (distinct); LeConte, “A Brief Confes-
sion of Faith, Written in 1890, Slightly Revised and Added to in 1897,” LeConte Fam-
ily Papers, Box 1, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. In “Man’s Place
in Nature,” 794, LeConte insisted that “Christian pantheism is the only true philo-
sophic view.” On the innocuous effects of evolution on religion, see also LeConte,Re-
lation of Evolution to Religious Thought, 2. For LeConte’s later views on the harmony of
Genesis and geology, see [LeConte], Review ofCreation; or, The Biblical Cosmogony in
the Light of Modern Science, by Arnold Guyot,Science3 (1884): 599–601.