THE DEFENCE OF DARWIN 53 



oratory. As Professor Farrar afterwards wrote to Mr. 

 Leonard Huxley : — 



" His false humour was an attempt to arouse the antipathy 

 about degrading ivoman to the quadrumana. Your father's 

 reply showed there was vulgarity as well as folly in the Bishop's 

 words, and the impression distinctly was, that the Bishop's 

 party, as they left the room, felt abashed, and recognised that 

 the Bishop had forgotten to behave like a perfect gentleman " 

 (Life, i, pp. 183-4, footnote). 



Huxley himself was the first to realize the advantage 

 gained by the rhetorical error of the Bishop, remarking 

 to Sir Benjamin Brodie, " The Lord hath delivered him 

 into mine hands." No absolutely reliable account exists 

 of Huxley's reply, which after dealing with the scientific 

 issues raised, ended with a retort that is not likely to 

 be forgotten. Huxley himself was of opinion that the 

 following rendering by the late John Richard Green 

 approached most nearly to accuracy, but it is practically 

 certain that the word " equivocal " was not employed : — 



" I asserted — and I repeat — that a man has no reason to be 

 ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were 

 an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would 

 rather be a man — a man of restless and versatile intellect — who, 

 not content with an equivocal success in his own sphere of 

 activity, 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 digressions and skilled appeals to religious 

 prejudice" (Life, i, p. 185). 



Hooker, from the botanical side, completed the dis- 

 comfiture of the anti-evolutionary forces. 



The Oxford meeting proved Huxley to be a debater 

 of the first order, and from this time on he was justly 

 regarded as the champion of Darwinian principles, and 



