DARWIN AND HIS FRIENDS 67 



your kindness and affection brought tears into my eyes. 

 Talk of fame, honour, pleasure, wealth, all are dirt compared 

 with affection ; and this is a doctrine with which, I know, 

 from your letter, that you will agree with from the bottom 

 of your heart.' 1 



These were the thoughts aroused in Darwin's 

 mind by tidings of the mighty conflict over ideas 

 which he had brought before the world. The appeal 

 of the new doctrine was to the reason and the 

 reason alone ; but the mind of man is something 

 more than an intellectual engine, and we can well 

 understand that here was a man for whom 

 others would fight more fiercely and tenaciously 

 than they would ever have done for themselves. 



The touching words written to Hooker must 

 not obscure the fact that Darwin saw and appre- 

 ciated the whole significance of the fight at 

 Oxford. He well knew its full value, as is clearly 

 proved by other parts of the letter and by those 

 written to Huxley on July 3rd and 20th. In the 

 latter he said : 



' From all that I hear from several quarters, it seems that 

 Oxford did the subject great good. It is of enormous im- 

 portance, the showing the world that a few first-rate men are 

 not afraid of expressing their opinion.' 2 



Twenty years later, only two years before 

 he died, Darwin recalled the great fight in a 

 letter to Huxley on the subject of his lecture 

 ' On the Coming of Age of the Origin of Species,' 

 given at the Royal Institution, April 9, 1880 : 



' . . . I well know how great a part you have played in 

 establishing and spreading the belief in the descent-theory, 



1 Life and Letters, ii. 323. * Life and Letters, ii. 324. 



P2 



