42 THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 



raphers in those days and the tenseness of the moment, 

 which made everyone forget to take down what was 

 said, make it impossible to tell exactly what happened. 

 It seems that Bishop Wilberforce, appealing to the 

 prejudices of his audience, said, in language that now 

 seems ludicrous but then was terribly bitter : "How- 

 ever, any of us might be willing to consider ourselves 

 descended from an ape upon his father's side, no one 

 would so demean his mother's memory as to imagine 

 that she could possibly have shared in this descent." 

 Huxley, who had waited patiently for the close of the 

 bishop's address, saw immediately the fatal mistake. 

 Turning to his companion beside him, he said, "The 

 Lord has delivered the Philistine into my hands," and, 

 rising, he hurled back at the bishop the indignant 

 reply, "I should far rather owe my origin to an ape 

 than I would owe it to a man who would use great 

 gifts to obscure the truth." The bishop had made the 

 mistake, and the struggle was on. Year by year it 

 raged. One by one the scientists, first of England, 

 and then of Germany, took their stand by Darwin. 

 Huxley in England and Haeckel in Germany were the 

 foremost advocates of the Darwinian idea. Long 

 and fiercely the battle raged; slowly and gradually 

 men began to see that, instead of undermining relig- 

 ion, the idea of evolution uplifted creation and made it 

 not a strange happening in the distant past, but a 



