256 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. III. No. 60. 



crudity, ignorance and arrogance, was one 

 that appeared in the great daily organ of 

 English opinion — The Times — marked by 

 superior knowledge, acuteness of argumen- 

 tation, and terse and vigorous style. This 

 review, which attracted general attention, 

 was acknowledged later by Huxley. Lec- 

 tures and addresses before popular audiences 

 and even to those distinctively claiming to 

 be ' workingmen ' followed, and these were 

 published or supplemented by publication 

 in various forms. Answers, critiques and 

 other articles in reply came out in rapid 

 succession, and loud clamor was made that 

 Huxley was an infidel and a very bad man, 

 and that he falsified and misrepresented in 

 a most villainous manner. 



A memorable occasion was the meeting 

 of the British Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science in the year 1860, following 

 the publication of the Origin of Species. A 

 discussion of the subject was precipitated by 

 the presentation of a communication by our 

 own Draper, ' On the Intellectual Develop- 

 ment of Europe with reference to the views 

 of Mr. Darwin and others, that the progres- 

 sion of organisms is determined by law.' 

 The Rev. Mr. Creswell and the Rev. Dr. 

 Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxfoi-d, followed in 

 opposition, and they were answered by 

 Huxley. The scene has lately been rede- 

 scribed by a great physiologist and fi-iend 

 of Huxley, who is one of the few witnesses 

 who now remain. " The room was crowded, 

 though it was Saturday, and the meeting 

 was excited. The bishop had spoken ; 

 cheered loudly from time to time during 

 his speech, he sat down amid rapturous ap- 

 plause, ladies waving their handkerchiefs 

 with great enthusiasm ; and in almost dead 

 silence, broken merely by greetings which, 

 coming only from the few who knew, 

 seemed as nothing, Huxley, then well-nigh 

 unknown outside the narrow circle of scien- 

 tific workers, began his reply. A cheer, 

 chiefly from a knot of young men in the 



audience, hearty but seeming scant through 

 the fewness of those who gave it, and almost 

 angrily resented by some, welcomed the 

 first point made. Then as, slowly and 

 measuredly at first, more quickly and with 

 more vigor later, stroke followed stroke, 

 the circle of cheers grew wider and yet 

 wider, until the speaker's last words were 

 crowned with an applause falling not far 

 short of, indeed equalling that which had 

 gone before, an applause hearty and genuine 

 in its recognition that a strong man had 

 arisen among the biologists of England." 



The versatile bishop indulged in the ar- 

 gumentum ad hominem so very trite and 

 familiar to us all (Who has not heard it?) : 

 he would like ' to hear from Mr. Huxley 

 whether it was by his grandfather's or 

 grandmother's side that he was related to 

 an ape.' 



Huxley replied and answered: "I as- 

 serted, and I repeat, that a man would have 

 no reason to be ashamed of having an ape 

 for a grandfather. If there were an ances- 

 tor whom I should feel shame in recalling, 

 it would be a man, a man of restless and 

 versatile intellect who, not content with an. 

 equivocal success in his own sphere of ac- 

 tivity, plunges into scientific 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 digres- 

 sions and skilled appeals to religious pre- 

 judice." 



The arguments adduced against evolution 

 during those days were sometimes very 

 comical, and the confident air of the up- 

 holder of the ancient views and the assur- 

 ance with which he claimed that his posi- 

 tion was fixed and that the burden of proof 

 rested entirely upon the advocate of the 

 opposite view, were very amusing. It was 

 urged that no one had ever seen one species 

 turn into another ! Had any one ever seen 

 any animal made? Could any one really 



