324 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY cHAP. XIII 



a maximum military expenditure, does not appear to me 

 to be worth making ; indeed I tliink it might do harm 

 by leading peojjle to suppose that the desires of Govern- 

 ments are the chief agents in determining whether peace 

 or war shall obtain in Europe. — I am, yours faithfully, 



T. H. HUXLKY. 



Later in the year, on August 8, took place the 

 meeting of the British Association at Oxford, note- 

 worthy for the presidential address delivered by Lord 

 Salisbury, Chancellor of the University, in which 

 the doctrine of evolution was "enunciated as a 

 matter of course — disputed by no reasonable man," 

 although accompanied by a description of the work- 

 ing of natural selection and variation which appeared 

 to the man of science a mere travesty of these 

 doctrines. 



Huxley had been persuaded to attend this meet- 

 ing, the more willingly, perhaps, since his reception 

 at Oxford the year before suggested that there 

 would be a special piquancy in the contrast between 

 this and the last meeting of the Association at 

 Oxford in 1860. He was not disappointed. Details 

 apart, the cardinal situation was reversed. The 

 genius of the place had indeed altered. The repre- 

 sentatives of the party, whose prophet had once con- 

 temptuously come here to anathematise the Origin, 

 returned at length to the same spot to admit — if 

 not altogether ungrudgingly — the greatness of the 

 work accomplished by Darwin. 



Once under promise to go, he could not escape 



