Books: The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1

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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.]

CHAPTER 1.15.

1860-1863.

[In the autumn he set to work to make good his promise of demonstrating
the existence in the simian brain of the structures alleged to be
exclusively human. The result was seen in his papers "On the Zoological
Relations of Man with the Lower Animals" ("Natural History Review" 1861
pages 67-68); "On the Brain of Ateles Paniscus," which appeared in the
"Proceedings of the Zoological Society" for 1861, and on "Nyctipithecus"
in 1862, while similar work was undertaken by his friends Rolleston and
Flower. But the brain was only one point among many, as, for example,
the hand and the foot in man and the apes; and he already had in mind
the discussion of the whole question comprehensively. On January 6 he
writes to Sir J. Hooker:--]

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