Charles Darwin: His Life in an Autobiographical Chapter Part 31

"The Bishop was up to time, and spoke for full half-an-hour with inimitable spirit, emptiness and unfairness. It was evident from his handling of the subject that he had been 'crammed' up to the throat, and that he knew nothing at first hand; in fact, he used no argument not to be found in his _Quarterly_ article.[213] He ridiculed Darwin badly, and Huxley savagely, but all in such dulcet tones, so persuasive a manner, and in such well-turned periods, that I who had been inclined to blame the President for allowing a discussion that could serve no scientific purpose, now forgave him from the bottom of my heart."

What follows is from notes most kindly supplied by the Hon. and Rev. W.

H. Fremantle, who was an eye-witness of the scene.

"The Bishop of Oxford attacked Darwin, at first playfully but at last in grim earnest. It was known that the Bishop had written an article against Darwin in the last _Quarterly Review_: it was also rumoured that Professor Owen had been staying at Cuddesden and had primed the Bishop, who was to act as mouthpiece to the great Palaeontologist, who did not himself dare to enter the lists. The Bishop, however, did not show himself master of the facts, and made one serious blunder. A fact which had been much dwelt on as confirmatory of Darwin's idea of variation, was that a sheep had been born shortly before in a flock in the North of England, having an addition of one to the vertebrae of the spine. The Bishop was declaring with rhetorical exaggeration that there was hardly any actual evidence on Darwin's side. 'What have they to bring forward?'

he exclaimed. 'Some rumoured statement about a long-legged sheep.' But he pa.s.sed on to banter: 'I should like to ask Professor Huxley, who is sitting by me, and is about to tear me to pieces when I have sat down, as to his belief in being descended from an ape. Is it on his grandfather's or his grandmother's side that the ape ancestry comes in?'

And then taking a graver tone, he a.s.serted in a solemn peroration that Darwin's views were contrary to the revelations of G.o.d in the Scriptures. Professor Huxley was unwilling to respond: but he was called for and spoke with his usual incisiveness and with some scorn. 'I am here only in the interests of science,' he said, 'and I have not heard anything which can prejudice the case of my august client.' Then after showing how little competent the Bishop was to enter upon the discussion, he touched on the question of Creation. 'You say that development drives out the Creator. But you a.s.sert that G.o.d made you: and yet you know that you yourself were originally a little piece of matter no bigger than the end of this gold pencil-case.' Lastly as to the descent from a monkey, he said: 'I should feel it no shame to have risen from such an origin. But I should feel it a shame to have sprung from one who prost.i.tuted the gifts of culture and of eloquence to the service of prejudice and of falsehood.'

"Many others spoke. Mr. Gresley, an old Oxford don, pointed out that in human nature at least orderly development was not the necessary rule; Homer was the greatest of poets, but he lived 3000 years ago, and has not produced his like.

"Admiral Fitz-Roy was present, and said that he had often expostulated with his old comrade of the _Beagle_ for entertaining views which were contradictory to the First Chapter of Genesis.

"Sir John Lubbock declared that many of the arguments by which the permanence of species was supported came to nothing, and instanced some wheat which was said to have come off an Egyptian mummy and was sent to him to prove that wheat had not changed since the time of the Pharaohs; but which proved to be made of French chocolate.[214] Sir Joseph (then Dr.) Hooker spoke shortly, saying that he had found the hypothesis of Natural Selection so helpful in explaining the phenomena of his own subject of Botany, that he had been constrained to accept it. After a few words from Darwin's old friend Professor Henslow who occupied the chair, the meeting broke up, leaving the impression that those most capable of estimating the arguments of Darwin in detail saw their way to accept his conclusions."

Many versions of Mr. Huxley's speech were current: the following report of his conclusion is from a letter addressed by the late John Richard Green, then an undergraduate, to a fellow-student, now Professor Boyd Dawkins:--"I a.s.serted, 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 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."[215]

The following letter shows that Mr. Huxley's presence at this remarkable scene depended on so slight a chance as that of meeting a friend in the street; that this friend should have been Robert Chambers, so that the author of the _Vestiges_ should have sounded the war-note for the battle of the _Origin_, adds interest to the incident. I have to thank Mr. Huxley for allowing the story to be told in words of his not written for publication.

_T. H. Huxley to Francis Darwin._

June 27, 1891.

... I should say that Fremantle's account is substantially correct; but that Green has the pa.s.sage of my speech more accurately. However, I am certain I did not use the word "equivocal."[216]

The odd part of the business is that I should not have been present except for Robert Chambers. I had heard of the Bishop's intention to utilise the occasion. I knew he had the reputation of being a first-rate controversialist, and I was quite aware that if he played his cards properly, we should have little chance, with such an audience, of making an efficient defence. Moreover, I was very tired, and wanted to join my wife at her brother-in-law's country house near Reading, on the Sat.u.r.day. On the Friday I met Chambers in the street, and in reply to some remark of his about the meeting, I said that I did not mean to attend it; did not see the good of giving up peace and quietness to be episcopally pounded. Chambers broke out into vehement remonstrances and talked about my deserting them. So I said, "Oh! if you take it that way, I'll come and have my share of what is going on."

So I came, and chanced to sit near old Sir Benjamin Brodie. The Bishop began his speech, and, to my astonishment, very soon showed that he was so ignorant that he did not know how to manage his own case. My spirits rose proportionally, and when he turned to me with his insolent question, I said to Sir Benjamin, in an undertone, "The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands."

That sagacious old gentleman stared at me as if I had lost my senses.

But, in fact, the Bishop had justified the severest retort I could devise, and I made up my mind to let him have it. I was careful, however, not to rise to reply, until the meeting called for me--then I let myself go.

In justice to the Bishop, I am bound to say he bore no malice, but was always courtesy itself when we occasionally met in after years. Hooker and I walked away from the meeting together, and I remember saying to him that this experience had changed my opinion as to the practical value of the art of public speaking, and that, from that time forth, I should carefully cultivate it, and try to leave off hating it. I did the former, but never quite succeeded in the latter effort.

I did not mean to trouble you with such a long scrawl when I began about this piece of ancient history.

Ever yours very faithfully T. H. HUXLEY.

The eye-witness above quoted (p. 237) continues:--

"There was a crowded conversazione in the evening at the rooms of the hospitable and genial Professor of Botany, Dr. Daubeny, where the almost sole topic was the battle of the _Origin_, and I was much struck with the fair and unprejudiced way in which the black coats and white cravats of Oxford discussed the question, and the frankness with which they offered their congratulations to the winners in the combat."[217]

_C. D. to J. D. Hooker._ Monday night [July 2nd, 1860].

MY DEAR HOOKER,--I have just received your letter. I have been very poorly, with almost continuous bad headache for forty-eight hours, and I was low enough, and thinking what a useless burthen I was to myself and all others, when your letter came, and it has so cheered me; your kindness and affection brought tears into my eyes. Talk of fame, honour, pleasure, wealth, all are dirt compared with affection; and this is a doctrine with which, I know, from your letter, that you will agree with from the bottom of your heart.... How I should have liked to have wandered about Oxford with you, if I had been well enough; and how still more I should have liked to have heard you triumphing over the Bishop. I am astonished at your success and audacity. It is something unintelligible to me how any one can argue in public like orators do. I had no idea you had this power. I have read lately so many hostile views, that I was beginning to think that perhaps I was wholly in the wrong, and that ---- was right when he said the whole subject would be forgotten in ten years; but now that I hear that you and Huxley will fight publicly (which I am sure I never could do), I fully believe that our cause will, in the long-run, prevail. I am glad I was not in Oxford, for I should have been overwhelmed, with my [health] in its present state.

_C. D. to J. D. Hooker._ [July 1860.]

... I have just read the _Quarterly_.[218] It is uncommonly clever; it picks out with skill all the most conjectural parts, and brings forward well all the difficulties. It quizzes me quite splendidly by quoting the _Anti-Jacobin_ versus my Grandfather. You are not alluded to, nor, strange to say, Huxley; and I can plainly see, here and there, ----'s hand. The concluding pages will make Lyell shake in his shoes. By Jove, if he sticks to us, he will be a real hero. Good-night. Your well-quizzed, but not sorrowful, and affectionate friend,

C. D.

I can see there has been some queer tampering with the review, for a page has been cut out and reprinted.

The following extract from a letter of Sept. 1st, 1860, is of interest, not only as showing that Lyell was still conscientiously working out his conversion, but also and especially as ill.u.s.trating the remarkable fact that hardly any of my father's critics gave him any new objections--so fruitful had been his ponderings of twenty years:--

"I have been much interested by your letter of the 28th, received this morning. It has _delighted_ me, because it demonstrates that you have thought a good deal lately on Natural Selection. Few things have surprised me more than the entire paucity of objections and difficulties new to me in the published reviews. Your remarks are of a different stamp and new to me."

_C. D. to Asa Gray._ [Hartfield, Suss.e.x] July 22nd [1860].

MY DEAR GRAY,--Owing to absence from home at water-cure and then having to move my sick girl to whence I am now writing, I have only lately read the discussion in _Proc. American Acad._,[219] and now I cannot resist expressing my sincere admiration of your most clear powers of reasoning.

As Hooker lately said in a note to me, you are more than _any one_ else the thorough master of the subject. I declare that you know my book as well as I do myself; and bring to the question new lines of ill.u.s.tration and argument in a manner which excites my astonishment and almost my envy![220] I admire these discussions, I think, almost more than your article in _Silliman's Journal_. Every single word seems weighed carefully, and tells like a 32-pound shot. It makes me much wish (but I know that you have not time) that you could write more in detail, and give, for instance, the facts on the variability of the American wild fruits. The _Athenaeum_ has the largest circulation, and I have sent my copy to the editor with a request that he would republish the first discussion; I much fear he will not, as he reviewed the subject in so hostile a spirit.... I shall be curious [to see], and will order the August number, as soon as I know that it contains your review of reviews. My conclusion is that you have made a mistake in being a botanist, you ought to have been a lawyer.

The following pa.s.sages from a letter to Huxley (Dec. 2nd, 1860) may serve to show what was my father's view of the position of the subject, after a year's experience of reviewers, critics and converts:--

"I have got fairly sick of hostile reviews. Nevertheless, they have been of use in showing me when to expatiate a little and to introduce a few new discussions.

"I entirely agree with you, that the difficulties on my notions are terrific, yet having seen what all the Reviews have said against me, I have far more confidence in the _general_ truth of the doctrine than I formerly had. Another thing gives me confidence, viz. that some who went half an inch with me now go further, and some who were bitterly opposed are now less bitterly opposed.... I can pretty plainly see that, if my view is ever to be generally adopted, it will be by young men growing up and replacing the old workers, and then young ones finding that they can group facts and search out new lines of investigation better on the notion of descent, than on that of creation."

FOOTNOTES:

[185] This refers to the pa.s.sage in the _Origin of Species_ (2nd edit.

p. 285) in which the lapse of time implied by the denudation of the Weald is discussed. The discussion closes with the sentence: "So that it is not improbable that a longer period than 300 million years has elapsed since the latter part of the Secondary period." This pa.s.sage is omitted in the later editions of the _Origin_, against the advice of some of his friends, as appears from the pencil notes in my father's copy of the 2nd edition.

[186] In the first edition, the pa.s.sages occur on p. 488.

[187] _Gardeners' Chronicle_, 1860. Sir J. D. Hooker took the line of complete impartiality, so as not to commit the editor, Lindley.

[188] On Jan. 23 Gray wrote to Darwin: "It naturally happens that my review of your book does not exhibit anything like the full force of the impression the book has made upon me. Under the circ.u.mstances I suppose I do your theory more good here, by bespeaking for it a fair and favourable consideration, and by standing non-committed as to its full conclusions, than I should if I announced myself a convert; nor could I say the latter, with truth....

"What seems to me the weakest point in the book is the attempt to account for the formation of organs, the making of eyes, &c., by natural selection. Some of this reads quite Lamarckian."

[189] In a letter to Mr. Murray, 1860, my father wrote:--"I am amused by Asa Gray's account of the excitement my book has made amongst naturalists in the U. States. Aga.s.siz has denounced it in a newspaper, but yet in such terms that it is in fact a fine advertis.e.m.e.nt!" This seems to refer to a lecture given before the Mercantile Library a.s.sociation.

[190] _Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist._ third series, vol. v. p. 132. My father has obviously taken the expression "pestilent" from the following pa.s.sage (p. 138): "But who is this Nature, we have a right to ask, who has such tremendous power, and to whose efficiency such marvellous performances are ascribed? What are her image and attributes, when dragged from her wordy lurking-place? Is she ought but a pestilent abstraction, like dust cast in our eyes to obscure the workings of an Intelligent First Cause of all?" The reviewer pays a tribute to my father's candour "so manly and outspoken as almost to 'cover a mult.i.tude of sins.'" The parentheses (to which allusion is made above) are so frequent as to give a characteristic appearance to Mr. Wollaston's pages.

[191] Another version of the words is given by Lyell, to whom they were spoken, viz. "the most illogical book ever written."--_Life and Letters of Sir C. Lyell_, vol. ii. p. 358.

[192] "On the Zoological Geography of the Malay Archipelago."--_Linn.

Soc. Journ._ 1860.

[193] The late Sir Charles Bunbury, well known as a Paleo-botanist.