iS6o MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE 



191 



Year to Mrs. Hooker, and tell her that if she, of her own natural 

 sagacitj' and knowledge of the naughtiness of my heart, affirms 

 that I wrote the article, I shall not contradict her — but that for 

 reasons of state — I must not be supposed to say anything. I am 

 pretty certain the Saturday article was not written by Owen. 

 On internal grounds, because no word in it exceeds an inch in 

 length ; on external, from what Cook said to me. The article 

 is weak enough and one-sided enough, but looking at the various 

 forces in action, I think Cook has fully redeemed his promise 

 to me. 



I went down to Sir P. Egerton on Tuesday — was ill when I 

 started, got worse and had to come back on Thursday. I am all 

 adrift now, but I couldn't stand being in the house any longer. 

 I wish I had been born an an-hcpatous foetus. 



All sorts of good wishes to you, and may you and I and 

 Tyndalides, and one or two more bricks, be in as good fighting 

 order in 1861 as in i860. — Ever yours, T. H. Huxley. 



Speaking of this period and the half-dozen preceding 

 years, in his 1894 preface to Man's Place in Nature he 

 says : — 



Among the many problems which came under my considera- 

 tion, the position of the human species in zoological classifica- 

 tion was one of the most serious. Indeed, at that time it was a 

 burning question in the sense that those who touched it were 

 almost certain to burn their fingers severely. It was not so 

 very long since my kind friend. Sir William Lawrence, one of 

 the ablest men whom I have known, had been well-nigh ostra- 

 cised for his book On Man, which now might be read in a Sun- 

 day school without surprising anybody ; it was only a few years 

 since the electors to the chair of Natural History in a famous 

 northern university had refused to invite a very distinguished 

 man to occupy it because he advocated the doctrine of the diver- 

 sity of species of mankind, or what was called " polygeny." 

 Even among those who considered man from the point of view, 

 not of vulgar prejudice, but of science, opinions lay poles 

 asunder. Linnjeus 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 op- 

 posed to anything which tended to break down the barrier be- 

 tween man and the rest of the animal world. 



My own mind was by no means definitely made up about this 



