THE COMING OF EVOLUTION 215 



notion of evolution with ridicule and sarcasm 

 ridicule for Darwin and his labours, sarcasm for Huxley 

 and his courage. It seems strange now to think that 

 a majority of the hearers were probably on the side of 

 the Bishop, and were totally unable, from preconceived 

 ideas, to weigh the value of the facts laid before them 

 on behalf of Darwin's theory, or to appreciate the 

 embryological evidence for evolution on which Sir 

 John Lubbock, now Lord Avebury, insisted. 



It would be a mistake to think that the evidence 

 offered in favour of some form of evolution through 

 natural selection was considered conclusive, even by 

 Huxley himself. Two years after the Oxford meeting, 

 Huxley wrote to Sir Charles Lyell : 



" If Darwin is right about natural selection the 

 discovery of this vera causa sets him to my mind in a 

 different region altogether from all his predecessors 

 I should no more call his doctrine a modification of 

 Lamarck's than I should call the Newtonian theory 

 of the celestial motions a modification of the Ptolemaic 

 system. Ptolemy imagined a mode of explaining those 

 motions. Newton proved their necessity from the 

 laws and a force demonstrably in operation. If he 

 is only right Darwin will, I think, take his place with 

 such men as Harvey, and even if he is wrong his 

 sobriety and accuracy of thought will put him on a 

 far different level from Lamarck." 



At one point in the controversy, much had been 

 held to depend on certain supposed differences of 

 structure in the human brain as compared with that 

 of the anthropoid apes. Huxley set to work to throw 

 light on the matter, " skull-measuring all day at the 

 College of Surgeons." As the result of this study he 



