258 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XIV 



lay poles asunder. Linnaeus had taken one view, Cuvier 

 another ; and among my senior contemporaries, men like 

 Lyell, regarded by many as revolutionaries of the deepest 

 dye, were strongly opposed to anything which tended to 

 break down the barrier between man and the rest of the 

 animal world. 



My own mind was by no means definitely made up 

 about this matter when, in the year 1857, a paper was 

 read before the Linnsean Society " On the Characters, 

 Principles of Division and Primary Groups of the Class 

 Mammalia," in which certain anatomical features of the 

 brain were said to be " peculiar to the genus ' Homo ' " 

 and were made the chief ground for separating that genus 

 from all other mammals and placing him in a division, 

 "^Archencephala," apart from, and superior to, all the 

 rest. As these statements did not agree with the opinions 

 I had formed, I set to work to reinvestigate the subject ; 

 and soon satisfied myself that the structures in question 

 were not peculiar to Man, but were shared by him with 

 all the higher and many of the lower apes. I embarked 

 in no public discussion of these matters, but my attention 

 being thus drawn to them, I studied the whole question 

 of the structural relations of Man to the next lower 

 existing forms with much care. And, of course, I 

 embodied my conclusions in my teaching. 



Matters were at this point when the Origin of Species 

 appeared. The weighty sentence, " Light will be thrown 

 on the origin of man and his history" (1st edition, p. 

 488), was not only in full harmony with the conclusions 

 at which I had arrived respecting the structural relations 

 of apes and men, but was strongly supported by them. 

 And inasmuch as Development and Vertebrate Anatomy 

 were not among Mr. Darwin's many specialities, it 

 appeared to me that I should not be intruding on the 

 ground he had made his own, if I discussed this part of 

 the general question. In fact, I thought that I might 

 probably serve the cause of Evolution by doing so, 



