394 Livingstone
refute the Vestiges. But by interlacing the two texts, Seubert succeeded in
making the book into a treatise supporting the conviction that evolution-
ary development took place according to divinely ordained laws. All in
all, very different messages were read in, and read into, Vestiges depending
on local circumstances. Textual meanings are mobile. Books exhibit their
own “geographies of reading.”MANAGING TEXTUAL SPACE
Something of the signifi cance of location in the staging of texts can be
discerned from a brief case study. In 1922, nearly two hundred years after
its fi rst appearance, Isaac Newton’s work on the biblical books of Dan-
iel and Revelation was made available again to the reading public.^56 The
text—reissued under the editorship of Sir William Whitla, emeritus pro-
fessor of Materia Medica at the Queen’s University, Belfast, former presi-
dent of the British Medical Association, and honorary physician to the
King in Ireland—affords an opportunity for refl ecting on the mobilization
of intellectual resources for cultural projects, and in particular, on the
enlistment of Newton as an ally in local campaigns of various stripes.^57
Scrutinizing Whitla’s Newton text in the context of early 1920s Belfast
serves to highlight the salience of textual space by furnishing an oppor-
tunity to disentangle one individual’s editorial tactics in the management
of textual encounter.
Whitla’s concern to retrieve Newton’s prophetic treatise had initially
been stimulated by an invitation to deliver a lecture on the book of Dan-
iel to his own Methodist church. In a short space of time his preliminary
thoughts had lengthened out into a lecture series which in turn became
a ten- chapter introduction to his reprint of Newton’s treatise. Right from
the start, Whitla made it perfectly clear how he intended Newton to be
read. In a day when critics were undermining the authority of the Bible,
inspiration could be derived from Newton who “in strong and childlike
faith lent his mighty intellect to the study of this fascinating record.”^58
The aim was to muster biblical prophecy Newton- style in the conduct of
current culture wars. In the religious world of the early twentieth century,
old certainties seemed to be evaporating in the face of the erosion of tradi-
tional virtues and the new literary criticism. In Northern Ireland itself, the
1920s heresy trial of J. Ernest Davey rotated around the issue of whether
higher criticism and orthodox faith were compatible.^59 In these circum-
stances, Whitla’s turning to Newton was precisely to enlist his reputation
in the cause of religious and social stability.