Chapter 20

Chapters 10 [The Geological Succession of Organic Beings], 11, 12 [Geographical Distribution], and Chapter 13 [Classification, Morphology, Embryology, and Rudimentary Organs] contains much that is most admirable, but on one or two points I enter a caveat until I can see further into all sides of the question.

As to the first four chapters [Chapter 1, Variation under Domestication; 2, Variation under Nature; 3, The Struggle for Existence; 4, Operation of Natural Selection; 5, Laws of Variation], I agree thoroughly and fully with all the principles laid down in them. I think you have demonstrated a true cause for the production of species, and have thrown the onus probandi, that species did not arise in the way you suppose, on your adversaries.

But I feel that I have not yet by any means fully realised the bearings of those most remarkable and original Chapters--III, IV, and V, and I will write no more about them just now.

The only objections that have occurred to me are--1st, That you have loaded yourself with an unnecessary difficulty in adopting Natura non facit saltum so unreservedly; and 2nd, It is not clear to me why, if continual physical conditions are of so little moment as you suppose, variation should occur at all.

However, I must read the book two or three times more before I presume to begin picking holes.

I trust you will not allow yourself to be in any way disgusted or annoyed by the considerable abuse and misrepresentation which, unless I greatly mistake, is in store for you. Depend upon it, you have earned the lasting gratitude of all thoughtful men. And as to the curs which will bark and yelp, you must recollect that some of your friends, at any rate, are endowed with an amount of combativeness which (though you have often and justly rebuked it) may stand you in good stead.

I am sharpening up my claws and beak in readiness.

Looking back over my letter, it really expresses so feebly all I think about you and your noble book, that I am half-ashamed of it; but you will understand that, like the parrot in the story, "I think the more."

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[A month later, fortune put into his hands the opportunity of striking a vigorous and telling blow for the newly-published book. Never was windfall more eagerly accepted. A short account of this lucky chance was written by him for the Darwin "Life" (volume 1 page 255).]

The "Origin" was sent to Mr. Lucas, one of the staff of the "Times" writers at that day, in what was I suppose the ordinary course of business. Mr. Lucas, though an excellent journalist, and at a later period, editor of "Once a Week," was as innocent of any knowledge of science as a babe, and be wailed himself to an acquaintance on having to deal with such a book. Whereupon, he was recommended to ask me to get him out of his difficulty, and he applied to me accordingly, explaining, however, that it would be necessary for him formally to adopt anything I might be disposed to write, by prefacing it with two or three paragraphs of his own.

I was too anxious to seize upon the opportunity thus offered of giving the book a fair chance with the multitudinous readers of the "Times," to make any difficulty about conditions; and being then very full of the subject, I wrote the article faster, I think, than I ever wrote anything in my life, and sent it to Mr. Lucas, who duly prefixed his opening sentences.

When the article appeared, there was much speculation as to its authorship. The secret leaked out in time, as all secrets will, but not by my aid; and then I used to derive a good deal of innocent amusement from the vehement assertions of some of my more acute friends, that they knew it was mine from the first paragraph!

As the "Times" some years since, referred to my connection with the review, I suppose there will be no breach of confidence in the publication of this little history, if you think it worth the space it will occupy.

[The article appeared on December 26. Only Hooker was admitted into the secret. In an undated note Huxley writes to him:--]

I have written the other review you wot of, and have handed it over to my friend to deal as he likes with it...Darwin will laugh over a letter that I sent him this morning with a vignette of the Jermyn Street "pet" ready to fight his battle, and the "judicious Hooker" holding the bottle.

[And on December 31 he writes again:--]

Jermyn Street, December 31, 1859.

My dear Hooker,

I have not the least objection to my share in the "Times" article being known, only I should not like to have anything stated on my authority. The fact is, that the first quarter of the first column (down to "what is a species," etc.) is not mine, but belongs to the man who is the official reviewer for the "Times" (my "Temporal" godfather I might call him).

The rest is my ipsissima verba, and I only wonder that it turns out as well as it does--for I wrote it faster than ever I wrote anything in my life. The last column nearly as fast as my wife could read the sheets. But I was thoroughly in the humour and full of the subject. Of course as a scientific review the thing is worth nothing, but I earnestly hope it may have made some of the educated mob, who derive their ideas from the "Times," reflect. And whatever they do, they SHALL respect Darwin.

Pray give my kindest regards and best wishes for the New Year to Mrs. Hooker, and tell her that if she, of her own natural sagacity and knowledge of the naughtiness of my heart, affirms that I wrote the article, I shall not contradict her--but that for reasons of state--I must not be supposed to say anything. I am pretty certain the Saturday article was not written by Owen. On internal grounds, because no word in it exceeds an inch in length; on external, from what Cook said to me. The article is weak enough and one-sided enough, but looking at the various forces in action, I think Cook has fully redeemed his promise to me.

I went down to Sir P. Egerton on Tuesday--was ill when I started, got worse and had to come back on Thursday. I am all adrift now, but I couldn't stand being in the house any longer. I wish I had been born an an-hepatous foetus.

All sorts of good wishes to you, and may you and I and Tyndalides, and one or two more bricks, be in as good fighting order in 1861 as in 1860.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[Speaking of this period and the half-dozen preceding years, in his 1894 preface to "Man's Place in Nature" he says:--]

Among the many problems which came under my consideration, the position of the human species in zoological classification was one of the most serious. Indeed, at that time it was a burning question in the sense that those who touched it were almost certain to burn their fingers severely. It was not so very long since my kind friend, Sir William Lawrence, one of the ablest men whom I have known, had been well-nigh ostracised for his book "On Man," which now might be read in a Sunday school without surprising anybody; it was only a few years since the electors to the chair of Natural History in a famous northern university had refused to invite a very distinguished man to occupy it because he advocated the doctrine of the diversity of species of mankind, or what was called "polygeny." Even among those who considered man from the point of view, not of vulgar prejudice, but of science, opinions lay poles asunder. Linnaeus had taken one view, Cuvier another; and among my senior contemporaries, men like Lyell, regarded by many as revolutionaries of the deepest dye, were strongly opposed to anything which tended to break down the barrier between man and the rest of the animal world.

My own mind was by no means definitely made up about this matter when, in the year 1857, a paper was read before the Linnean Society "On the Characters, Principles of Division and Primary Groups of the Class Mammalia," in which certain anatomical features of the brain were said to be "peculiar to the genus 'Homo,'" and were made the chief ground for separating that genus from all other mammals and placing him in a division, "Archencephala," apart from, and superior to, all the rest. As these statements did not agree with the opinions I had formed, I set to work to reinvestigate the subject; and soon satisfied myself that the structures in question were not peculiar to Man, but were shared by him with all the higher and many of the lower apes. I embarked in no public discussion of these matters, but my attention being thus drawn to them, I studied the whole question of the structural relations of Man to the next lower existing forms, with much care. And, of course, I embodied my conclusions in my teaching.

Matters were at this point when the "Origin of Species" appeared. The weighty sentence, "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history" (1st edition page 488), was not only in full harmony with the conclusions at which I had arrived respecting the structural relations of apes and men, but was strongly supported by them. And inasmuch as Development and Vertebrate Anatomy were not among Mr. Darwin's many specialities, it appeared to me that I should not be intruding on the ground he had made his own, if I discussed this part of the general question. In fact, I thought that I might probably serve the cause of Evolution by doing so.

Some experience of popular lecturing had convinced me that the necessity of making things clear to uninstructed people was one of the very best means of clearing up the obscure corners in one's own mind. So, in 1860, I took the Relation of Man to the lower Animals for the subject of the six lectures to working men which it was my duty to deliver. It was also in 1860 that this topic was discussed before a jury of experts at the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, and from that time a sort of running fight on the same subject was carried on, until it culminated at the Cambridge Meeting of the Association in 1862, by my friend Sir W. Flower's public demonstration of the existence in the apes of those cerebral characters which had been said to be peculiar to man.

[The famous Oxford Meeting of 1860 was of no small importance in Huxley's career. It was not merely that he helped to save a great cause from being stifled under misrepresentation and ridicule--that he helped to extort for it a fair hearing; it was now that he first made himself known in popular estimation as a dangerous adversary in debate--a personal force in the world of science which could not be neglected. From this moment he entered the front fighting line in the most exposed quarter of the field.

Most unluckily, no contemporary account of his own exists of the encounter. Indeed, the same cause which prevented his writing home the story of the day's work nearly led to his absence from the scene. It was known that Bishop Wilberforce, whose first class in mathematics gave him, in popular estimation, a right to treat on scientific matters, intended to "smash Darwin"; and, Huxley, expecting that the promised debate would be merely an appeal to prejudice in a mixed audience, before which the scientific arguments of the Bishop's opponents would be at the utmost disadvantage, intended to leave Oxford that very morning and join his wife at Hardwicke, near Reading, where she was staying with her sister. But in a letter, quoted below, he tells how, on the Friday afternoon, he chanced to meet Robert chambers, the reputed author of the "Vestiges of Creation," who begged him "not to desert them." Accordingly he postponed his departure; but seeing his wife next morning, had no occasion to write a letter.

Several accounts of the scene are already in existence: one in the "Life of Darwin" (volume 2 page 320), another in the 1892 "Life," page 236 sq.; a third that of "Lyell" (volume 2 page 335), the slight differences between them representing the difference between individual recollections of eye-witnesses. In addition to these I have been fortunate enough to secure further reminiscences from several other eye-witnesses.

Two papers in Section D, of no great importance in themselves, became historical as affording the opponents of Darwin their opportunity of making an attack upon his theory which should tell with the public. The first was on Thursday, June 28. Dr. Daubeny of Oxford made a communication to the Section, "On the final causes of the sexuality of plants, with particular reference to Mr. Darwin's work on the "Origin of Species." (My best thanks are due to Mr. F. Darwin for permission to quote his accounts of the meeting; other citations are from the "Athenaeum" reports of July 14, 1860.) Huxley was called upon to speak by the President, but tried to avoid a discussion, on the ground "that a general audience, in which sentiment would unduly interfere with intellect, was not the public before which such a discussion should be carried on."

This consideration, however, did not stop the discussion; it was continued by Owen. He said he "wished to approach the subject in the spirit of the philosopher," and declared his "conviction that there were facts by which the public could come to some conclusion with regard to the probabilities of the truth of Mr. Darwin's theory." As one of these facts, he stated that the brain of the gorilla "presented more differences, as compared with the brain of man, than it did when compared with the brains of the very lowest and most problematical of the Quadrumana."

Now this was the very point, as said above, upon which Huxley had made special investigations during the last two years, with precisely opposite results, such as, indeed, had been arrived at by previous investigators. Hereupon he replied, giving these assertions a "direct and unqualified contradiction," and pledging himself to "justify that unusual procedure elsewhere,"--a pledge which was amply fulfilled in the pages of the "Natural History Review" for 1861.

Accordingly it was to him, thus marked out as the champion of the most debatable theory of evolution, that, two days later, the Bishop addressed his sarcasms, only to meet with a withering retort. For on the Friday there was peace; but on the Saturday came a yet fiercer battle over the "Origin," which loomed all the larger in the public eye, because it was not merely the contradiction of one anatomist by another, but the open clash between Science and the Church. It was, moreover, not a contest of bare fact or abstract assertion, but a combat of wit between two individuals, spiced with the personal element which appeals to one of the strongest instincts of every large audience.

It was the merest chance, as I have already said, that Huxley attended the meeting of the section that morning. Dr. Draper of New York was to read a paper on the "Intellectual Development of Europe considered with reference to the views of Mr. Darwin." "I can still hear," writes one who was present, "the American accents of Dr. Draper's opening address when he asked 'Air we a fortuitous concourse of atoms?'" However, it was not to hear him, but the eloquence of the Bishop, that the members of the Association crowded in such numbers into the Lecture Room of the Museum, that this, the appointed meeting-place of the section, had to be abandoned for the long west room, since cut in two by a partition for the purposes of the library. It was not term time, nor were the general public admitted; nevertheless the room was crowded to suffocation long before the protagonists appeared on the scene, 700 persons or more managing to find places. The very windows by which the room was lighted down the length of its west side were packed with ladies, whose white handkerchiefs, waving and fluttering in the air at the end of the Bishop's speech, were an unforgettable factor in the acclamation of the crowd.

On the east side between the two doors was the platform. Professor Henslow, the President of the section, took his seat in the centre; upon his right was the Bishop, and beyond him again Dr. Draper; on his extreme left was Mr. Dingle, a clergyman from Lanchester, near Durham, with Sir J. Hooker and Sir J. Lubbock in front of him, and nearer the centre, Professor Beale of King's College, London, and Huxley.

The clergy, who shouted lustily for the Bishop, were massed in the middle of the room; behind them in the north-west corner a knot of undergraduates (one of these was T.H. Green, who listened but took no part in the cheering) had gathered together beside Professor Brodie, ready to lift their voices, poor minority though they were, for the opposite party. Close to them stood one of the few men among the audience already in Holy orders, who joined in--and indeed led--the cheers for the Darwinians.

So "Dr. Draper droned out his paper, turning first to the right hand and then to the left, of course bringing in a reference to the Origin of Species which set the ball rolling."

An hour or more that paper lasted, and then discussion began. The President "wisely announced in limine that none who had not valid arguments to bring forward on one side or the other would be allowed to address the meeting; a caution that proved necessary, for no fewer than four combatants had their utterances burked by him, because of their indulgence in vague declamation." ("Life of Darwin" l.c.)

First spoke (writes Professor Farrar (Canon of Durham.)) a layman from Brompton, who gave his name as being one of the Committee of the (newly formed) Economic section of the Association. He, in a stentorian voice, let off his theological venom. Then jumped up Richard Greswell with a thin voice, saying much the same, but speaking as a scholar (The Reverend Richard Greswell, B.D., Tutor of Worcester College.); but we did not merely want any theological discussion, so we shouted them down. Then a Mr. Dingle got up and tried to show that Darwin would have done much better if he had taken him into consultation. He used the blackboard and began a mathematical demonstration on the question--"Let this point A be man, and let that point B be the mawnkey." He got no further; he was shouted down with cries of "mawnkey." None of these had spoken more than three minutes. It was when these were shouted down that Henslow said he must demand that the discussion should rest on SCIENTIFIC grounds only.

Then there were calls for the Bishop, but he rose and said he understood his friend Professor Beale had something to say first. Beale, who was an excellent histologist, spoke to the effect that the new theory ought to meet with fair discussion, but added, with great modesty, that he himself had not sufficient knowledge to discuss the subject adequately. Then the Bishop spoke the speech that you know, and the question about his mother being an ape, or his grandmother.

From the scientific point of view, the speech was of small value. It was evident from his mode of handling the subject that he had been "crammed up to the throat," and knew nothing at first hand; he used no argument beyond those to be found in his "Quarterly" article, which appeared a few days later, and is now admitted to have been inspired by Owen. "He ridiculed Darwin badly and Huxley savagely; but," confesses one of his strongest opponents, "all in such dulcet tones, so persuasive a manner, and in such well turned periods, that I who had been inclined to blame the President for allowing a discussion that could serve no scientific purpose, now forgave him from the bottom of my heart." ("Life of Darwin" l.c.)

The Bishop spoke thus "for full half an hour with inimitable spirit, emptiness and unfairness." "In a light, scoffing tone, florid and fluent, he assured us there was nothing in the idea of evolution; rock-pigeons were what rock-pigeons had always been. Then, turning to his antagonist with a smiling insolence, he begged to know, was it through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey?" ("Reminiscences of a Grandmother," "Macmillan's Magazine," October 1898. Professor Farrar thinks this version of what the Bishop said is slightly inaccurate. His impression is that the words actually used seemed at the moment flippant and unscientific rather than insolent, vulgar, or personal. The Bishop, he writes, "had been talking of the perpetuity of species of Birds; and then, denying a fortiori the derivation of the species Man from Ape, he rhetorically invoked the aid of FEELING, and said, 'If any one were to be willing to trace his descent through an ape as his GRANDFATHER, would he be willing to trace his descent similarly on the side of his GRANDMOTHER?' His false humour was an attempt to arouse the antipathy about degrading WOMAN to the quadrumana. Your father's reply showed there was vulgarity as well as folly in the Bishop's words; and the impression distinctly was, that the Bishop's party, as they left the room, felt abashed, and recognised the Bishop had forgotten to behave like a perfect gentleman.")

This was the fatal mistake of his speech. Huxley instantly grasped the tactical advantage which the descent to personalities gave him. He turned to Sir Benjamin Brodie, who was sitting beside him, and emphatically striking his hand upon his knee, exclaimed,] "The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands." [The bearing of the exclamation did not dawn upon Sir Benjamin until after Huxley had completed his "forcible and eloquent" answer to the scientific part of the Bishop's argument, and proceeded to make his famous retort. (The "Athenaeum" reports him as saying that Darwin's theory was an explanation of phenomena in Natural History, as the undulatory theory was of the phenomena of light. No one objected to that theory because an undulation of light had never been arrested and measured. Darwin's theory was an explanation of facts, and his book was full of new facts, all bearing on his theory. Without asserting that every part of that theory had been confirmed, he maintained that it was the best explanation of the origin of species which had yet been offered. With regard to the psychological distinction between men and animals, man himself was once a monad--a mere atom, and nobody could say at what moment in the history of his development he became consciously intelligent. The question was not so much one of a transmutation or transition of species, as of the production of forms which became permanent.

Thus the short-legged sheep of America was not produced gradually, but originated in the birth of an original parent of the whole stock, which had been kept up by a rigid system of artificial selection.)

On this (continues the writer in "Macmillan's Magazine") Mr. Huxley slowly and deliberately arose. A slight tall figure, stern and pale, very quiet and very grave ("Young, cool, quiet, scientific--scientific in fact and in treatment."--J.R. Green. A certain piquancy must have been added to the situation by the superficial resemblance in feature between the two men, so different in temperament and expression. Indeed next day at Hardwicke, a friend came up to Mr. Fanning and asked who his guest was, saying, "Surely it is the son of the Bishop of Oxford."), he stood before us and spoke those tremendous words--words which no one seems sure of now, nor, I think, could remember just after they were spoken, for their meaning took away our breath, though it left us in no doubt as to what it was. He was not ashamed to have a monkey for his ancestor; but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used great gifts to obscure the truth. No one doubted his meaning, and the effect was tremendous. One lady fainted and had to be carried out; I, for one, jumped out of my seat.

The fullest and probably most accurate account of these concluding words is the following, from a letter of the late John Richard Green, then an undergraduate, to his friend, afterwards Professor Boyd Dawkins (The writer in "Macmillan's" tells me: "I cannot quite accept Mr. J.R. Green's sentences as your father's; though I didn't doubt that they convey the sense; but then I think that only a shorthand writer could reproduce Mr. Huxley's singularly beautiful style--so simple and so incisive. The sentence given is much too 'Green.'")]

I asserted--and I repeat--that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man--a man of restless and versatile intellect--who, not content with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice. (My father once told me that he did not remember using the word "equivocal" in this speech. (See his letter below.) The late Professor Victor Carus had the same impression, which is corroborated by Professor Farrar.) (As the late Henry Fawcett wrote in "Macmillan's Magazine," 1860:--"The retort was so justly deserved, and so inimitable in its manner, that no one who was present can ever forget the impression that it made.")

Further, Mr. A.G. Vernon-Harcourt, F.R.S., Reader in Chemistry at the University of Oxford, writes to me:--

The Bishop had rallied your father as to the descent from a monkey, asking as a sort of joke how recent this had been, whether it was his grandfather or further back. Your father, in replying on this point, first explained that the suggestion was of descent through thousands of generations from a common ancestor, and then went on to this effect--"But if this question is treated, not as a matter for the calm investigation of science, but as a matter of sentiment, and if I am asked whether I would choose to be descended from the poor animal of low intelligence and stooping gait, who grins and chatters as we pass, or from a man, endowed with great ability and a splendid position, who should use these gifts" (here, as the point became clear, there was a great outburst of applause, which mostly drowned the end of the sentence) "to discredit and crush humble seekers after truth, I hesitate what answer to make."

No doubt your father's words were better than these, and they gained effect from his clear, deliberate utterance, but in outline and in SCALE this represents truly what was said.

After the commotion was over, "some voices called for Hooker, and his name having been handed up, the President invited him to give his view of the theory from the Botanical side. This he did, demonstrating that the Bishop, by his own showing, had never grasped the principles of the 'Origin,' and that he was absolutely ignorant of the elements of botanical science. The Bishop made no reply, and the meeting broke up." ("Life of Darwin," l.c.)

ACCOUNT OF THE OXFORD MEETING BY THE REVEREND W.H. FREEMANTLE (in "Charles Darwin, his Life Told" etc. 1892 page 238.)

The Bishop of Oxford attacked Darwin, at first playfully, but at last in grim earnest. It was known that the Bishop had written an article against Darwin in the last "Quarterly Review" (It appeared in the ensuing number for July.); it was also rumoured that Professor Owen had been staying in Cuddesdon and had primed the Bishop, who was to act as mouthpiece to the great Paleontologist, who did not himself dare to enter the lists. The Bishop, however, did not show himself master of the facts, and made one serious blunder. A fact which had been much dwelt on as confirmatory of Darwin's idea of variation, was that a sheep had been born shortly before in a flock in the North of England, having an addition of one to the vertebrae of the spine. The Bishop was declaring with rhetorical exaggeration that there was hardly any evidence on Darwin's side. "What have they to bring forward?" he exclaimed. "Some rumoured statement about a long-legged sheep." But he passed on to banter: "I should like to ask Professor Huxley, who is sitting by me, and is about to tear me to pieces when I have sat down, as to his belief in being descended from an ape. Is it on his grandfather's or his grandmother's side that the ape ancestry comes in?" And then taking a graver tone, he asserted, in a solemn peroration, that Darwin's views were contrary to the revelation of God in the Scriptures. Professor Huxley was unwilling to respond: but he was called for, and spoke with his usual incisiveness and with some scorn:] "I am here only in the interests of science," [he said,] "and I have not heard anything which can prejudice the case of my august client." [Then after showing how little competent the Bishop was to enter upon the discussion, he touched on the question of Creation.] "You say that development drives out the Creator; but you assert that God made you: and yet you know that you yourself were originally a little piece of matter, no bigger than the end of this gold pencil-case." [Lastly as to the descent from a monkey, he said:] "I should feel it no shame to have risen from such an origin; but I should feel it a shame to have sprung from one who prostituted the gifts of culture and eloquence to the service of prejudice and of falsehood."

[Many others spoke. Mr. Gresley, an old Oxford don, pointed out that in human nature at least orderly development was not the necessary rule: Homer was the greatest of poets, but he lived 3000 years ago, and has not produced his like.

Admiral FitzRoy was present, and said he had often expostulated with his old comrade of the "Beagle" for entertaining views which were contradictory to the First Chapter of Genesis.

Sir John Lubbock declared that many of the arguments by which the permanence of species was supported came to nothing, and instanced some wheat which was said to have come off an Egyptian mummy, and was sent to him to prove that wheat had not changed since the time of the Pharaohs; but which proved to be made of French chocolate. Sir Joseph (then Dr.) Hooker spoke shortly, saying that he had found the hypothesis of Natural Selection so helpful in explaining the phenomena of his own subject of Botany, that he had been constrained to accept it. After a few words from Darwin's old friend, Professor Henslow, who occupied the chair, the meeting broke up, leaving the impression that those most capable of estimating the arguments of Darwin in detail saw their way to accept his conclusions.

Note.--Sir John Lubbock also insisted on the embryological evidence for evolution. F.D.]

[T.H. Huxley To Francis Darwin (ibid.).]

June 27, 1891.

I should say that Freemantle's account is substantially correct, but that Green has the substance of my speech more accurately. However, I am certain I did not use the word, "equivocal."

The odd part of the business is, that I should not have been present except for Robert Chambers. I had heard of the Bishop's intention to utilise the occasion. I knew he had the reputation of being a first-class controversialist, and I was quite aware that if he played his cards properly, we should have little chance, with such an audience, of making an efficient defence. Moreover, I was very tired, and wanted to join my wife at her brother-in-law's country house near Reading, on the Saturday. On the Friday I met Chambers in the street, and in reply to some remark of his, about his going to the meeting, I said that I did not mean to attend it--did not see the good of giving up peace and quietness to be episcopally pounded. Chambers broke out into vehement remonstrances, and talked about my deserting them. So I said, "Oh! if you are going to take it that way, I'll come and have my share of what is going on."

So I came, and chanced to sit near old Sir Benjamin Brodie. The Bishop began his speech, and to my astonishment very soon showed that he was so ignorant that he did not know how to manage his own case. My spirits rose proportionately, and when he turned to me with his insolent question, I said to Sir Benjamin, in an undertone, "The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands."

That sagacious old gentleman stared at me as if I had lost my senses. But, in fact, the Bishop had justified the severest retort I could devise, and I made up my mind to let him have it. I was careful, however, not to rise to reply, until the meeting called for me--then I let myself go.

In justice to the Bishop, I am bound to say he bore no malice, but was always courtesy itself when we occasionally met in after years. Hooker and I walked away from the meeting together, and I remember saying to him that this experience had changed my opinion as to the practical value of the art of public speaking, and that from that time forth I should carefully cultivate it, and try to leave off hating it. I did the former, but never quite succeeded in the latter effort.

I did not mean to trouble you with such a long scrawl when I began about this piece of ancient history.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[In the evening there was a crowded conversazione in Dr. Daubney's rooms, and here, continues the writer in "Macmillan's," "everyone was eager to congratulate the hero of the day. I remember that some naive person wished 'it could come over again'; Mr. Huxley, with the look on his face of the victor who feels the cost of victory, put us aside saying,] 'Once in a lifetime is enough, if not too much.'"

[In a letter to me the same writer remarks--

I gathered from Mr. Huxley's look when I spoke to him at Dr. Daubeny's that he was not quite satisfied to have been forced to take so personal a tone--it a little jarred upon his fine taste. But it was the Bishop who first struck the insolent note of personal attack.

Again, with reference to the state of feeling at the meeting:--

I never saw such a display of fierce party spirit, the looks of bitter hatred which the audience bestowed--(I mean the majority) on us who were on your father's side--as we passed through the crowd we felt that we were expected to say "how abominably the Bishop was treated"--or to be considered outcasts and detestable.

It was very different, however, at Dr. Daubeny's, "where," says the writer of the account in "Darwin's Life," "the almost sole topic was the battle of the 'Origin,' and I was much struck with the fair and unprejudiced way in which the black coats and white cravats of Oxford discussed the question, and the frankness with which they offered their congratulations to the winners in the combat."

The result of this encounter, though a check to the other side, cannot, of course, be represented as an immediate and complete triumph for evolutionary doctrine. This was precluded by the character and temper of the audience, most of whom were less capable of being convinced by the arguments than shocked by the boldness of the retort, although, being gentlefolk, as Professor Farrar remarks, they were disposed to admit on reflection that the Bishop had erred on the score of taste and good manners. Nevertheless, it was a noticeable feature of the occasion, Sir M. Foster tells me, that when Huxley rose he was received coldly, just a cheer of encouragement from his friends, the audience as a whole not joining in it. But as he made his points the applause grew and widened, until, when he sat down, the cheering was not very much less than that given to the Bishop. To that extent he carried an unwilling audience with him by the force of his speech. The debate on the ape question, however, was continued elsewhere during the next two years, and the evidence was completed by the unanswerable demonstrations of Sir W.H. Flower at the Cambridge meeting of the Association in 1862.

The importance of the Oxford meeting lay in the open resistance that was made to authority, at a moment when even a drawn battle was hardly less effectual than acknowledged victory. Instead of being crushed under ridicule, the new theories secured a hearing, all the wider, indeed, for the startling nature of their defence.]