194 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xiv 



work on the Origin of Species." * Huxley was called upon 

 to speak by the President, but tried to avoid a discussion, 

 on the ground " that a general audience, in which senti- 

 ment would unduly interfere with intellect, was not the 

 public before which such a discussion should be carried on." 



This consideration, however, did not stop the discussion ; 

 it was continued by Owen. He said he " wished to ap- 

 proach the subject in the spirit of the philosopher," and 

 declared his " conviction that there were facts by which the 

 public could come to some conclusion with regard to the 

 probabilities of the truth of Mr. Darwin's theory." As 

 one of these facts, he stated that the brain of the gorilla 

 " presented more differences, as compared with the brain of 

 man, than it did when compared with the brains of the very 

 lowest and most problematical of the Quadrumana." 



Now this was the very point, as said above, upon which 

 Huxley had made special investigations during the last two 

 years, with precisely opposite results, such as, indeed, had 

 been arrived at by previous investigators. Hereupon he 

 replied, giving these assertions a " direct and unqualified 

 contradiction," and pledging himself to " justify that un- 

 usual procedure elsewhere," — a pledge which was amply 

 fulfilled in the pages of the Natural History Review for 

 1861. 



Accordingly it was to him, thus marked out as the 

 champion of the most debatable thesis of evolution, that, 

 two days later, the Bishop addressed his sarcasms, only to 

 meet with a withering retort. For on the Friday there was 

 peace ; but on the Saturday came a yet fiercer battle over 

 the " Origin," which loomed all the larger in the public eye, 

 because it was not merely the contradiction of one anatomist 

 by another, but the open clash between Science and the 

 Church. It was, moreover, not a contest of bare bact or 

 abstract assertion, but a combat of wit between two indi- 

 viduals, spiced with the personal element which appeals to 

 one of the strongest instincts of every large audience. 



* My best thanks are due to Mr. F. Darwin for permission to quote 

 his accounts of the meeting; other citations are from the A iAenceum 

 reports of July 14, i860. 



