Phases of an Inferior Planet by Ellen Glasgow

With the closing session, Algarcife lost his position at the Bodley College. He had published, for a mere pittance, a series of articles upon the origin of sex, and, as a result, he was requested to deliver his resignation to the principal of the institution. A man holding such views, it was argued, was an unsuitable instructor for sixty-one young women. So the instructorship was transferred to a divinity student who was casually looking into science, and Algarcife was dismissed.

Upon receiving his dismissal, he descended into the street and walked slowly homeward. His first sensation was one of anger -- blind anger against the blindness of the universe. It seemed incredible that a premium should be set upon commonplaceness, that modern civilization should demand of a man that he shape his mind by an artificial process after the minds of semi-savage ancestors. Was thought to be forever prostrate beneath the feet of superstition? Was all boldness of inquiry, all mental advancement along other than given lines, to be branded in the nineteenth century by the _odium theologicum_ as it had been branded in the time of Bruno?