400 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, xxn 



after years of absence. He raised his figure and his voice to 

 its full height, and, with one foot turned over the edge of the 

 step, veiled an unmistakable and vigorous protest in the most 

 gracious and dignified speech of thanks. 



Throughout the subsequent special sessions of this meeting 

 Huxley could not appear. He gave the impression of being 

 aged but not infirm, and no one realised that he had spoken his 

 last word as champion of the law of evolution. 



Such criticism of the address as he actually expressed 

 reappears in the leading article, " Past and Present," which 

 he wrote for Nature to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary 

 of its foundation (Nov. i, 1894). 



The essence of the criticism is that with whatever demon- 

 strations of hostility to parts of the Darwinian theory Lord 

 Salisbury covered the retreat of his party from their ancient 

 positions, he admitted the validity of the main points for 

 which Darwin contended. 



The essence of this great work (the Origin of Species) may 

 be stated summarily this : it affirms the mutability of species and 

 the descent of living forms, separated by differences of more 

 than varietal value, from one stock. That is to say, it propounds 

 the doctrine of evolution as far as biology is concerned. So far, 

 we have merely a re-statement of a doctrine which, in its most 

 general form, is as old as scientific speculation. So far, we have 

 the two theses which were declared to be scientifically absurd 

 and theologically damnable by the Bishop of Oxford in 1860. 



It is also of these two fundamental doctrines that, at the 

 meeting of the British Association in 1894, the Chancellor of the 

 University of Oxford spoke as follows : 



' Another lasting and unquestioned effect has resulted from 

 Darwin's work. He has, as a matter of fact, disposed of the 

 doctrine of the immutability of species. . . ." 



' Few now are found to doubt that animals separated by 

 differences far exceeding those that distinguished what we know 

 as species have yet descended from common ancestors." 



Undoubtedly, every one conversant with the state of bio- 

 logical science is aware that general opinion has long had good 

 reason for making the volte face thus indicated. It is also mere 

 justice to Darwin to say that this " lasting and unquestioned ' ! 

 revolution is, in a very real sense, his work. And yet it is also 

 true that, if all the conceptions promulgated in the Origin of 



