52 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 



reverence is the handmaid of knowledge ; that free discussion 

 is the life of truth, and of true unity in a nation." 



It is a somewhat curious fact that, but for the urgent 

 request of Robert Chambers, Huxley had intended not 

 to champion the cause of evolution in the now famous 

 debate at the British Association in the summer, for he 

 realized very fully the difficulties presented by a mixed 

 audience, and the argumentum ad hominem that was sure to 

 be employed on the other side. Preliminary skirmishing 

 took place on Thursday, June 28, when, in the discus- 

 sion that followed a paper by Dr. Daubeny, read before 

 Section D, Owen stated as a fact that the gorilla's brain 

 " presented more differences, as compared with the brain 

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

 the lowest and most problematical of the Quadrumana." 

 Huxley's special knowledge enabled him flatly to con- 

 tradict so unwarranted an assertion, this " unusual pro- 

 cedure" being fully justified subsequently. 



The historic debate took place on the following Satur- 

 day, when Wilberforce, the then Bishop of Oxford, 

 crammed to the muzzle by Owen with undigested and 

 inaccurate information, spoke, 



" For full half an hour with inimitable spirit, emptiness and 

 unfairness. ... In a light, scoffing tone, florid and fluent, he 

 assured us there was nothing in the idea of evolution ; rock- 

 pigeons were what rock-pigeons had always been. Then, turn- 

 ing to his antagonist with a smiling insolence, he begged to 

 know, was it through his grandfather or his grandmother that 

 he claimed his descent from a monkey?" (Reminiscences of 

 a Grandmother, Macmillan's Magazine, October 1898). 



Such mistaken flippancy helped the evolutionary cause 

 in no small degree. Ignorance might be condoned, but 

 not such an unworthy resort to the resources of mob 



