CHARLES DARWIN 63 



Darwin's most powerful supporters, Hooker and 

 Huxley, were definitely averse from this form of 

 discussion. After Daubeny's paper, Huxley pleaded 

 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/ 

 But when Owen asserted that the differences between 

 the brains of the gorilla and man were greater than 

 those between the gorilla and ' the very lowest of 

 the Quadrumana/ Huxley was forced to meet him 

 with a direct contradiction, which he subsequently 

 justified by evidence. Two days later the battle 

 was rejoined more ardently. Wilberforce, Bishop of 

 Oxford, was announced to speak in the section, which 

 was thereupon crowded to such degree that its meeting- 

 room must be changed for the occasion. Hooker and 

 Huxley would fain have absented themselves : only 

 personal appeals brought them to the meeting. The 

 speeches were not fully reported at the time, but the 

 incidents of the meeting are preserved in corre- 

 spondence and from personal recollections, and are 

 detailed in the Lives of Darwin, Huxley, Hooker, 

 and Lyell, and elsewhere. After Draper's paper, 

 none of the minor combatants was allowed by the 

 audience to delay the access of the bishop to the 

 platform, and he was the first to secure a protracted 

 hearing. To his scientific listeners, he betrayed his 

 ignorance in almost every sentence, as he had pre- 

 viously in a review of Darwin's book in the Quarterly 

 Review] it was also patent to them that Owen had 

 coached him. But in his peroration he made an 

 almost incredible false step, when he refused, for 

 himself, to regard monkeys as his ancestors, and 

 turned to Huxley to ask whether it was through his 



