452 JJFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XXIII 



fewer and less noisy, while the injustice of their 

 attempts to stifle the new doctrine and to ostracise 

 its supporters became more glaring. 



Thus among the supporters of the old order of 

 thought, there was one section more or less ready to 

 learn of the new. Another, seeing that the doctrines 

 of which they were firmly convinced were thrust aside 

 by the rapid advance of the new school, thought, as 

 men not unnaturally think in the like situation, that 

 the latter did not duly weigh what was said on their 

 side. Hence this section eagerly entered into the 

 proposal to found a society which should bring 

 together men of diverse views, and effect, as they 

 hoped, by personal discussion of the great questions 

 at issue, in the manner and with the machinery of 

 the learned societies, a rapprochement unattainable by 

 written debate. 



The scheme was first propounded by Mr. James 

 Knowles, then editor of the Contemporary Review, now 

 of the Nineteenth Century, in conversation with Tenny- 

 son and Professor Pritchard (Savilian Professor of 

 Astronomy at Oxford). 



Thus the Society came to be composed of men of 

 the most opposite ways of thinking and of very 

 various occupations in life. The largest group was 

 that of churchmen : ecclesiastical dignitaries such as 

 Thomson, the Archbishop of York, Ellicott, Bishop 

 of Gloucester and Bristol, and Dean Alford ; staunch 

 laymen such as Mr. Gladstone, Lord Selborne, and 

 the Duke of Argyll ; while the liberal school was 



