HUXLEY AND NATURAL SELECTION. 133 



" None have fought better, and none have been more 

 fortunate, than Charles Darwin. He found a great truth 

 trodden underfoot, reviled by bigots, and ridiculed by all the 

 world; he lived long enough to see it, chiefly by his own 

 eflfbrts, irrefragibly established in science, ..." 



In the impressive speech in which Huxley handed 

 over the statue of Darwin to the Prince of Wales, as 

 representative of the Trustees of the British Museum, 

 on June 9th, 1885 (" Darwiniana," p. 248), the refer- 

 ences to Darwin are most consistent with the view 

 that the support to evolution was held by the speaker 

 to be the great work of his life. Natural selection 

 is not mentioned. 



The next publication on this subject by Huxley 

 is the celebrated chapter " On the Reception of the 

 ' Origin of Species,' " in the second volume of the 

 great " Life and Letters." In this chapter he speaks 

 rather more confidently about natural selection than 

 in some of the earlier essays and in the later 

 speeches : — 



" The reality and the importance of the natural processes 

 on which Darwin founds his deductions are no more doubted 

 than those of growth and multiplication ; and, whether the 

 full potency attributed to them is admitted or not, no one 

 doubts their vast and far-reaching significance." 



But of evolution he speaks far more strongly : — 



" To any one who studies the signs of the times, the 

 emergence of the philosophy of Evolution, [" bound hand and 

 foot and cast into utter darkness during the millennium of 

 theological scholasticism "] in the attitude of claimant to the 



