Lectures to Workingmen 147 



turned his attention to the anatomy and classification 

 of the higher animals. When Owen's essay appeared, 

 he found that he was unable to agree with many of the 

 conclusions contained in it, and had set about a renewed 

 investigation of the matter. Thus it happened that, 

 when the question became prominent, in i860, Huxley 

 was ready with material contributions to it. He be- 

 lieved, moreover, that, as Darwin was not specially 

 acquainted with the anatomy and development of verte- 

 brates, there was an opportunity for doing a real service 

 to the cause of evolution. Accordingly, in i860, he 

 took for the subject of a series of lectures to working- 

 men the " Relation of Man to the L,ower Animals," 

 and, in 1862, expanded the lectures into a volume 

 called Man' s Place in Nature. When it was ready, he 

 was prepared to say with a good conscience that his 

 conclusions " had not been formed hastily or enunciated 

 crudely." 



" I thought," he wrote in the preface to the 1894 edition, " I 

 had earned the right to publish them, and even fancied I might 

 be thanked, rather than reproved, for so doing. However, in 

 my anxiety to promulgate nothing erroneous, I asked a highly 

 competent anatomist and very good friend of mine to look 

 through my proofs, and, if he could, point out any errors of 

 fact. I was well pleased when he returned them without any 

 criticism on that score ; but my satisfaction was speedily dashed 

 by the very earnest warning, as to the consequences of publica- 

 tion, which my friend's interest in my welfare led him to give ; 

 but, as I have confessed elsewhere, when I was a young man 

 there was just a little — a mere soiipgon — in my composition 

 of that tenacity of purpose which has another name, and I felt 

 sure that all the evil things prophesied would not be so painful 

 to me as the giving up of that which I had resolved to do, upon 

 grounds which I conceived to be right. So the book came out, 

 and I must do my friend the justice to say that his forecast was 

 completely justified. The Boreas of criticism blew his hardest 



