192 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xiv 



matter when, in the year 1857, a paper was read before the 

 Linnasan 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 sepa- 

 rating 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 discus- 

 sion 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 ap- 

 peared. The weighty sentence, " Light will be thrown on the 

 origin of man and his history" (ist 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 prob- 

 ably serve the cause of Evolution by doing so. 



Some experience of popular lecturing had convinced me that 

 the necessity of making things clear to uninstructed people was 

 one of the very best means of clearing up the obscure corners 

 in one's own mind. So, in i860, I took the Relation of Man to 

 the Lower Animals for the subject of the six lectures to work- 

 ing men which it was my duty to deliver. It was also in i860 

 that this topic. was discussed before a jury of experts at the 

 meeting of the British Association at Oxford, and from that 

 time a sort of running fight on the same subject was carried on, 

 until it culminated at the Cambridge Meeting of the Association 

 in 1862, by my friend Sir W. Flower's public demonstration of 

 the existence in the apes of those cerebral characters which had 

 been said to be peculiar to man. 



The famous Oxford Meeting of i860 was of no small 

 importance in Huxley's career. It was not merely that he 



