26 HUXLEY 



monkey ? ' " But the Bishop's enthusiasm had 

 landed him in a mess. Huxley immediately perceived 

 the advantage given to him by the Bishop's descent 

 to personalities, and, turning to Sir Benjamin Brodie, 

 who sat beside him, quietly exclaimed, " The Lord 

 hath delivered him into mine hands," the complete 

 significance of which remark was not appreciated by 

 Sir Benjamin until Huxley proceeded to make his 

 famous retort. 



A writer in MacmillarCs Magazine thus describes 

 what followed : " Mr. Huxley slowly and deliber- 

 ately arose. A slight tall figure, stern and pale, 

 very quiet and very grave, he stood before us and 

 spoke those tremendous words — words which no 

 one seems sure of now, nor, I think, could remember 

 just after they were spoken, for their meaning took 

 away our breath, though it left us in no doubt as 

 to what it was. ' He was not ashamed to have a 

 monkey for his ancestor ; but he would be ashamed 

 to be connected with a man who used great gifts to 

 obscure the truth,' No one doubted his meaning, 

 and the effect was tremendous." Another report 

 of the speech is given by Mr. J. R. Green, which 

 runs as follows : " I asserted— and I repeat — that 

 a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an 

 ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor 

 whom I should feel shame in recalling it would 

 rather be a man — a man of restless and versatile 

 intellect — who, not content with an equivocal suc- 

 cess in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scien- 

 tific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, 

 only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and 

 distract the attention of his hearers from the real 

 point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled 



