Science, Religion, and the Human Experience
experiencing evolution 225
- Joseph LeConte, “Immortality in Modern Thought,”Science6 (1885): 126–127
(science says nothing); Josiah Royce,The Conception of God, with comments by Sidney
Edward Mezes, Joseph LeConte, and G. H. Howison (Berkeley: Philosophical Union
of the University of California, 1895), 49–50 (whole purpose balked); Bessie LeConte
to Joseph LeConte, March [?], 1903, LeConte Family Papers, Box 1. On LeConte’s pre-
occupation with immortality, see Brown, “Joseph LeConte,” 130, 168. On immortality,
see also LeConte, “The Natural Grounds of Belief in a Personal Immortality,”Andover
Review14 (1890): 1–13; and Stephen E. Wald, “Revelations of Consciousness: Joseph
LeConte, the Soul, and the Challenge of Scientific Naturalism,” unpublished MS,
Duke University, 1998. I am especially indebted to Timothy Odom Brown, “Joseph
LeConte,” for his insights into LeConte’s changing views on immortality.
- Mary Lesley Ames, ed.,Life and Letters of Peter and Susan Lesley(New York:
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1909), 1: 22–23, 39, 114–116, 134: Benjamin Smith Lyman, “Bio-
graphical Notice of J. Peter Lesley,” reprinted ibid., 2: 452–483; see esp. 2: 455–458.
Ames was Lesley’s daughter; Lyman, his nephew. There is no scholarly biography of
Lesley, but on his career as a consulting geologist, see Paul Lucier, “Commercial In-
terests and Scientific Disinterestedness: Consulting Geologists in Antebellum Amer-
ica,”Isis86 (1995): 245–267.
- Ames,Life and Letters, 1: 162–166; Lyman, “Biographical Notice,” 2: 458–461;
Patsy Gerstner,Henry Darwin Rogers, 1808–1866: American Geologist(Tuscaloosa: Uni-
versity of Alabama Press, 1994), 184; W. M. Davis, “Biographical Memoir of Peter
Lesley, 1819–1903,” National Academy of Sciences,Biographical Memoirs8 (1919):
174, 192–193. The British geologist Charles Lyell, who had recently visited the United
States, reported in his published memoir, that an unnamed young ministerial candi-
date in America had failed to receive ordination because he believed that the first
book of Genesis was “inconsistent with discoveries now universally admitted, respect-
ing the high antiquity of the earth and the existence of living beings on the globe
long anterior to man.” Charles Lyell,A Second Visit to the United States(London,
1849), 1: 218, quoted in Lyman, “Biographical Notice,” 2: 461–462. Lesley insisted
that “Lyell was quite wrong,” but something of the sort seems to have happened; see
Davis, “Biographical Memoir,” 174–175.
- Davis, “Biographical Memoir,” 176–197.
- Ames,Life and Letters, 1: 504–515; J. P. Lesley,Man’s Origin and Destiny(Phil-
adelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1868), 19, 43, 45, 50.
- Lesley,Man’s Origin and Destiny, 76–82. On the response of American scien-
tists to evolution, see Numbers,Darwinism Comes to America, 24–48.
- Lesley,Man’s Origin and Destiny, 18, 117, 119; Lesley to Susan Lesley, January
11, 1866, quoted in Ames,Life and Letters,1: 512. Regarding Gray, see Numbers,Dar-
winism Comes to America, 27. On the history of polygenism in America, see William
Stanton,The Leopard’s Spots: Scientific Attitudes toward Race in America, 1815–59(Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1960); and David N. Livingstone,The Preadamite
Theory and the Marriage of Science and Religion(Philadelphia: American Philosophical
Society, 1992). In the early 1880s, Lesley returned briefly to the subject of evolution,
adding six new chapters toMan’s Origin and Destiny(Boston: Geo. H. Ellis, 1881).
- Lyman, “Biographical Notice,” 2: 471–475, 482; Charles Gordon Ames, “A
Memorial Discourse, Preached in the Church of the Disciples, Boston, January 24,
