146 Thomas Henry Huxley 



It is true, he went on to explain his belief in the exist- 

 ence of certain characters in the brain which seemed to 

 him to justify the separation of man in a different group 

 from that in which the apes were placed ; but it is 

 certain that he regretted having said anything which 

 seemed to support the Darwinian view ; and, two 3^ears 

 later, when the opposition to Darwin was in its acutest 

 stage, Owen withdrew his words. His " Reade Lec- 

 ture," delivered in the University of Cambridge, was 

 in all respects a reprint of the essay from which we 

 have just quoted, but the apparently dangerous words 

 were omitted. More than that, the points insisted on 

 in the essay as being sufficient for the purpose of sepa- 

 rating man in zoological classification were elevated 

 into a reason against descent. Although Huxley, in 

 several addresses and publications, disproved the exist- 

 ence of the alleged differences, and although Sir Wil- 

 liam Flower gave an actual demonstration shewing the 

 essential identity of the brain of man and of the apes in 

 the matter in question, Owen never admitted his error. 

 It is not surprising that, if an anatomist so distin- 

 guished and acute as was Owen allowed his judgment 

 to be completely overborne by the storm of prejudice 

 against Darwinism, those who were not anatomists 

 should have held up to ridicule all idea of comparison 

 between man and the apes. In The Origin of Species 

 itself, no elaborate attempt had been made to set forth 

 the anatomical arguments in favour of or against a 

 community of descent for man and the apes. But it 

 was made sufficiently plain, and the public laid hold of 

 the point eagerly, that the doctrine of descent was not 

 meant to exclude man from the field of its operation. 

 Huxley, in the course of his ordinar}' work as Professor 

 of Biology, had, among many other subjects, naturally 



