nburgh Review-Bishop Wilberforce attacks in the Quarterly Review-Huxley's Scathing Replies-The British Association Debat

annoyance and abuse he might expect from those whose opinions were too suddenly disturb

n store for you. Depend upon it, you have earned the lasting gratitude of all thoughtful men; and as to the curs which will bark and yelp, you must recollect th

my claws and be

ad more and more widely, bearing as its fruit the emancipation of slaves, the spread of political freedom, the amelioration of the conditions of the dregs of humanity, the right of all to education, the possibility of universal peace based on the brotherhood of man; and all that was best in philosophy and in political practice seemed bound up with a lofty view of the unit of mankind. Carlyle himself, to whom many of the freest and noblest spirits in Europe were beginning to look as to an inspired prophet, could see in it nothing but a "monkey damnification of mankind." The dogmatic world saw in it nothing but a deliberate and malicious assault upon religion. The Church of England in particular was beginning to recover from a long period of almost incredible supineness, and there was arising a large body of clergy full of faith and zeal and good works, but quite unacquainted with science, who frankly regarded Darwin as Antichrist, and Huxley and Tyndall as emissaries of the devil. Against evolutionists there was left unused no weapon that ignorant prejudice could find, whether that prejudice was inspired by a lofty zeal for what it conceived to be the highest interests of humanity, or by a crafty policy which saw

he first great review of The Origin of Species in the Times, at that period without question the leading jou

of Once a Week, was as innocent of any knowledge of science as a babe, and bewailed himself to an acquaintance on having to deal with such a book, whereupon he was recommended to ask me to get him out of his dif

in my life, and sent it to Mr. Lucas, who duly prefixed his opening sentences. When the article appeared, there was much speculation as to its authorship. The secret leaked out in time, as all secrets will, but not by my aid; and then I used to derive a good deal of innocent amuseme

u seen the splendid essay and notice of my book in the Times? I cannot avoid a strong suspicion that it is by Huxley; but I have ne

y, he writes and thinks with quite uncommon force and clearness; and, what is even still rarer, his writing is seasoned with most pleasant wit. We all laughed heartily over some of the sentences.... Who can it be? Certainly I should have said that there was only one man in England who could have written this essay, and that you

a particularly great shock to Darwin, Huxley, and their friends. Sir Richard Owen, in many ways, was at that time the most distinguished anatomist in England. He had been an ardent follower of Cuvier, and in England had carried on the pal?ontological work of the great Frenchman. He was a personal friend of the court, a well-known man in the best society, and in many ways a worthy upholder of the best traditions of science. In the particular matter of species, he was known to be by no means a firm supporter of the orthodox views. When Darwin's paper was read at the Linn?an Society, and afterwards when the Origin was published, the verdict of Owen was looked to with the greatest interest by the general public. For a time he wavered, and even expressed himself of the opinion that he had already in his published works included a considerable portion of Darwin's views. But two things seemed to have influenced him: First, Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford, and Sedgwick and Whewell, the two best-known men at Cambridge, urged him to stamp once for all, as he only could do, upon this "new and pernicious doctrine." Second

enjoyed it together. Not that I really enjoyed it, for it made me uncomfortable for one night; but I have quite got over it to-day. It requires much study to appreciate all the bitter spite of many of the remarks against me

t justifies the sternness with which Huxley exposed Owen on an occasion shortly to be described. The review in the Quarterly was written by Wilberforce, the Bishop of Ox

orthy of such dishonour than the article in the Quarterly Review for July, 1860. Since Lord Brougham assailed Dr. Young, the world has seen no such specimen of the insolence of a shallow pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a 'flighty' person who endeavours to 'prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation,' and whose 'mode of dealing with nature' is reprobated as 'utterly dishonourable to natural science.' And all this high and mighty talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr. Darwin's equals, proceeds from a writer whose want of intelligence, or of conscience, or of both, is so great, that, by way of an objection to Mr. Darwin's views, he can ask, 'Is it credible that all favourable varieties of turnips are tending to become men'; who is so ignorant of pal?ontology th

not aware when writing these lines that the authorship o

s with which Mr. Darwin speaks of his assailant, Bishop Wilberforce, is so striking an exemplification of his si

d popular, and in this case he was convinced that he was doing the best possible for the great interests of religion by authoritatively denouncing a man whose character he was incapable of realising, and on whose work he was incompetent to pronounce an opinion. Against an enemy of this kind, Huxley was implacable and relentless. He was constitutionally incapable of tolerating pretentious ignorance, and he had realised from the first that there could be no question of giving and taking quarter from persons who were more

it fell that the meeting of the British Association, then coming into prominence as the annual parliament of the sciences, was to be held at Oxford. It was inevitable that evolution should be debated formally and informally in the sessions of the Association, and it must have seemed to the orthodox that there, in that beautiful city, its air vibrant with tinkling calls to faith, its halls and libraries crowded with the devout and the learned, its history and traditions alike calling on all to defend the old fair piety, in such an uncongenial air, the supporters of evolution must be overwhelmed. Almost the whole weight of the attack had to be resisted by Huxley. In the various sectional meetings he had combat after combat with professors and clerics. Of these dialectic fights the most notable were one with Owen on the anatomical structure of the brain, and another with Wilberforce upon the general question of evolution. Owen contended that there were anatomical differences not merely of degree but of kind between the brain of man and the brain of the highest ape, and his remarks were accepted by the audience as a complete and authoritative blow to the theory of descent.

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 acquaintan

mply dispelled the vaporous effusions of the Bishop; but the majority of the audience retained the old convictions. The combat was removed to a wider tribunal. From that time forwards Huxley, by a series of essays, addresses, and investigation

, on the whole, the idea of fixity prevailed more among thinkers with a religious bias; but for the most part the theories were debated independently of the tenets of any faith, Christian or other. There were sceptical defenders of fixity and religious upholders of evolution. However, in Christian countries, from the time of the Reformation onwards, a change in this neutrality of religion to theories of the living world took place. As Pascal prophesied, Protestantism rejected the idea of an infallible Church in favour of the idea of an infallible book, and, because it happened that this book included an early legend of the origin of the world in a form apparently incompatible with evolution, Protestantism and, to a lesser and secondary extent, Catholicism, assumed the position that there was no place for evolution in a Christian philosophy. At the end of last century, and up to the middle of this century, the problem was not raised in any acute form. The chief anatomists and botanists were occupied with the investigation and discovery of facts, and, in an ord

st among animals, he was more than prepared for it. Let us take a single definite example of his position. In his work on the Medus?, he had shewn how a large number of creatures, at first

s are homologous, and the families have a real affinity to one another and should form one group.... It appears, then, that these five families are by no means so distinct as has hitherto been supposed, but that they are members of one great group, organised upon one simple and uniform plan, and, even in their most complex and aberrant forms, reducible to the same type. And I may add, finally, tha

throughout his life afterwards, as he expressed it, it was this "ancient doctrine of evolution, rehabilitated and placed upon a sound scientific foundation, since, and in consequence of, the publication of The Origin of Species," that furnished him with the chief inspiration of his work. The clear accuracy of his original judgment upon Darwin's work has been abundantly justified by subsequent history. Since 1859 the case for evolut

... Few now are found to doubt that animals separated by differences far exceeding tho

to the address, used

r them, that as a matter of fact the doctrine of the immutability of species was disposed of and gone. He found that few were now found to doubt that animals separated by differences fa

robable hypothesis as to the mode in which evolution had come about, maintained that it was only a hypothe

beside Mr. Darwin's.... But you must recollect that when I say I think it is either Mr. Darwin's hypothesis or nothing; that either we must take his view, or look upon the whole of organic

78 he

t, if not the whole cause, it is a very important factor in that operation; and that it must play a gre

ts operation actually does produce species; it will always be impossible to prove that, in the past, natural selection, and no other known or unknown agency or combination of agencies, had a share in the process. All naturalists are now agreed that, as a matter of historical fact, it was the propounding of natural selection by Dar

es.... I adopt Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, therefore, subject to the production of proof that physiological species may be produced by selective breeding; just as a physical philosopher may accept the undulatory theory of light, subject to the proof of the existence of the hypothetical ether; or as the chemist adopts the atomic theory, subject to the proof of the existence of atoms; and for exactly the same reasons, namely, t

TNO

here an account of the history of the idea of evolution from the earliest times is given; and in Poulton's Charles Darwi

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