66 THE PERSONALITY OF CHARLES DARWIN 



misunderstood, and it is certain that his keenly 

 sympathetic and emotional nature did not in the 

 slightest degree suffer the injury of which he 

 spoke in the autobiography (1881). 'The loss of 

 these tastes [the higher aesthetic tastes] is a loss 

 of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the 

 intellect, and more probably to the moral character, 

 by enfeebling the emotional side of our nature. ' l A 

 single example must suffice, but it supplies over- 

 whelming proof. The most dramatic episode in 

 the history of Darwinism was the encounter 

 between Huxley and the Bishop of Oxford on 

 the Saturday (June 30) of the meeting of the 

 British Association at Oxford in I860. 2 The scene 

 of the struggle was the northern section of the 

 first floor room stretching along the whole western 

 front of the University Museum, then just 

 finished. Late on Sunday night Hooker wrote to 

 Darwin, giving him * some account of the awful 

 battles which .... raged about species at Oxford.' 

 Darwin replied at once, his letter being dated 

 July 2 (Monday) : 



' I have been very poorly, with almost continuous bad 

 headache for forty-eight hours, and I was low enough, and 

 thinking what a useless burthen I was to myself and all 

 others, when your letter came, and it has so cheered me ; 



1 Life and Letters, i. 102. 



8 A curious and interesting feature of the Saturday meeting 

 was the presence of Darwin's old captain on the Beagle, Fitz-Roy, 

 who, in a state of frantic excitement, brandished a bible and kept 

 trying to make impassioned appeals to the authority of ' the Book '. 

 I was told of this incident, as yet I believe unrecorded, by the late 

 Mr. George Griffith ; and my friend Dr. A. G. Vernon Harcourt, 

 F.R.S., who was also present, confirms the accuracy of the account. 



