Article contents
Return to the Wilberforce–Huxley Debate
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
Extract
One hundred and twenty-eight years ago in the historic city of Oxford a relatively brief impromptu verbal exchange at a scientific convention occurred. It is still vividly remembered in and out of academia. This so-called ‘debate’ between the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, and the young scientist, Thomas Henry Huxley, a simple and concrete episode, has continued to symbolize dramatically the complex and abstract phenomenon of the conflict between science and religion in the late nineteenth century. while that symbol may be somewhat inaccurate, or its relevance may have shifted from a century ago, it still is a powerful image, one which continues to be an important part of the religious, scientific and rhetorical history of the late Victorian era. Moore recently wrote: ‘No battle of the nineteenth century, save Waterloo, is better known.’ It is, as Altholz put it, ‘one of those historical events the substance and significance of which are clear, but whose specifics are decidedly fuzzy around the edges.’ It is the purpose of this paper to present a full and balanced view of the specific ingredients, permitting a better insight into the event's symbolism and significance.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1988
References
1 See, for instance, the work of Armstrong, A. MacC., ‘Samuel Wilberforce versus T.H. Huxley: a retrospect’, The Quarterly Review, (1958), 296, pp. 425–437Google Scholar; Lucas, J.R., ‘Wilberforce and Huxley: a legendary encounter’, The Historical Journal, (1979), 22, pp. 313–330CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Gilley, Sheridan and Loades, Ann, ‘Thomas Henry Huxley: the war between science and religion’, The Journal of Religion, (1981), 61, pp. 285–308CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gilley, Sheridan, ‘The Huxley–Wilberforce Debate: a reconstruction’, in Religion and Humanism: Papers read at the Eighteenth Summer Meeting and the Nineteenth Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society (ed. Robbins, Keith), Oxford, 1981, pp. 325–340.Google Scholar Approximately the first 40% of the last two sources are identical, except for very minor differences.
2 Moore, James R., The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870–1900, Cambridge, 1979, p. 60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Altholz, Joseph L., ‘The Huxley – Wilberforce Debate revisited’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (1980), 35, p. 314.Google ScholarPubMed
4 The British Association had met in Oxford on two previous occasions, 1832 and 1847.
5 Jackson's Oxford Journal, 7 07 1860, p. 4Google Scholar; MacLeod, Roy and Collins, Peter, eds, The Parliament of Science, 1981, Northwood, Middlesex, p. 280.Google Scholar
6 7 July, 1860, p. 656. See also The Athenaeum, 7 07 p. 19.Google Scholar
7 The 1250 copies were sold immediately; 3000 more were published in January 1860, 2000 in April 1861, and more than 6000 in the next decade [Sirde Beer, Gavin, Charles Darwin: Evolution by Natural Selection, London, 1963, p. 279Google Scholar; Darwin, Francis, ed., The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, 2 vols, New York, 1899, II, 1, p. 149Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Darwin]. Darwin had arranged for the publisher to send copies to a number of key scientists. For some interesting rhetorical analyses of Darwin's works, see Campbell, John Angus, ‘Darwin and The Origin of Species: the rhetorical ancestry of an idea’, Speech Monographs, (1970), 37, 1–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Charles Darwin and the crisis of ecology, a rhetorical perspective’, Quarterly Journal of Speech, (1974), 60, pp. 442–449Google Scholar; ‘The polemical Mr Darwin’, Quarterly Journal of Speech, (1975), 61, pp. 375–390Google Scholar; Warnick, Barbara, ‘a rhetorical analysis of episteme shift: Darwin's Origin of the [sic] Species’, Southern Speech Communication Journal, (1983), 49, 26–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 Rolleston, George to Lubbock, John, 1 12 1859Google Scholar, B.L. Add. MSS 49638, Lubbock Letters, fol. 175.
9 Huxley, Leonard, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, 2 vols, New York, 1916, 1, pp. 188–189Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Huxley). Throughout, it should be realized, as Bartholomew, Michael, ‘Huxley's defence of Darwin’, Annals of Science, (1975), 32, p. 529CrossRefGoogle Scholar, emphasizes, Huxley was defending a person—his friend—as well as an idea.
10 Page 146. Darwin immediately wrote to Huxley: ‘You have explained my leading idea with admirable clearness. What a gift you have of writing (or more properly) thinking clearly’ (Darwin, II, p. 34).Google Scholar
11 For Huxley's account of how he was, by chance, given the opportunity to write the review, and how hastily he wrote it, see Huxley, 1, p. 189–190Google Scholar; Darwin, II, 49–50Google Scholar; Huxley, to Hooker, , 31 12 1859Google Scholar, Huxley Papers (Imperial College of Science and Technology, South Kensington), vol. ii, fols 57–58.
12 Darwin, II, 47–48.Google Scholar Darwin was amazed that the Times would devote 3½ columns to the review of a science book. Eleven months later, Darwin wrote to Huxley: ‘I shall always think those early reviews, almost entirely yours, did the subject an enormous service’. Italics his. Ibid., p. 144. Darwin's son and biographer, Francis Darwin, later wrote: ‘There can be no doubt that this powerful essay, appearing as it did in the leading daily Journal, must have had a strong influence on the reading public’, Ibid, p. 49.
13 Lyell, to Ticknor, George, 9 01 1860Google Scholar, in MrsLyell, , ed., Life, Letters and journals of Sir Charles Lyell, 2 vols, London, 1881, II, p. 329Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Lyell).
14 Darwin, II, p. 76.Google Scholar See also, Royal Institution, Journals of Thomas Archer Hirst (hereafter cited as Hirst Journals), vol. iii, fol. 152.Google Scholar
15 Darwin, II, p. 79.Google Scholar
16 See di Gregorio, Mario A., T.H. Huxley's Place in Natural Science, New Haven, 1984, pp. 35–44Google Scholar; Richards, Evelleen, ‘A question of property rights: Richard Owen's evolutionism reassessed’, British Journal for the History of Science, (1987), 20, pp. 129–171CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially pp. 169–171; Knight, David, The Age of Science: The Scientific World-View in the Nineteenth Century, Oxford, 1986, pp. 100–102, 115.Google Scholar
17 Vol. 225 (1860), pp. 251–275.
18 Vol. 73 (1860), pp. 295–310.
19 Darwin, II, p. 94.Google Scholar Italics are Darwin's.
20 Ibid., p. 101. Darwin's former Cambridge mentor, the highly respected botanist, Rev. J.S. Henslow, reported to Darwin; ‘I don't think it is at all becoming in one Naturalist to be better against another any more than for one sect to burn the members of another’ (5 May 1860, in Barlow, Nora, ed., Darwin and Henslow—The Growth of an Idea—Letters 1831–1860, Berkeley, 1967, p. 203).Google Scholar
21 See for example, Darwin, II, pp. 15, 17, 28, 31, 35, 47, 58, 61–62, 84, 93, 96, 100–102, 109–110Google Scholar; Darwin, Francis and Seward, A.C., eds, More Letters of Charles Darwin, 2 vols, New York, 1903, I, pp. 156–157, 161Google Scholar (hereafter cited as More Letters).
22 The Athenaeum, 30 06 1860, p. 886.Google Scholar See also Jackson's Oxford Journal, 30 06 1860, p. 4Google Scholar; The Times, 28 06 1860, p. 12.Google Scholar
23 The Athenaeum, 7 07, p. 26.Google Scholar
24 The Press, 7 07, p. 656.Google Scholar
25 Morrell, Jack and Thackray, Arnold, Gentlemen of Science: Early Years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Oxford, 1981, p. 395.Google Scholar For an 1860 engraving of the new museum, see ibid., plate 25.
26 Ibid., p. 394.
27 Rev. Tuckwell, W., Reminiscences of Oxford, 2nd edn, London, 1907, p. 51.Google Scholar
28 Morrell, and Thackray, , op. cit. (25), p. 395.Google Scholar
29 Jackson's Oxford journal, 7 07, p. 4.Google Scholar
30 The Evening Star, 2 07, p. 3.Google Scholar
31 Darwin, II, 114.Google Scholar An eyewitness later wrote: ‘Though a few persons on each side knew of the intention of the Bishop to speak at the meeting, this was not generally known’ (Rev. Farrar, A.S. to Huxley, Leonard, 12 07 1899Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, vol. xvi, fol. 13).Google Scholar
32 (MrsSidgwick, Isabel), ‘A grandmother's tales’, Macmillan's Magazine, (1898), 78, 1, p. 433.Google Scholar For attribution of authorship, see Houghton, Walter E., ed., The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824–1900, 3 vols, Toronto, 1966, 1, p. 656.Google Scholar See also Tuckwell, , op. cit. (27), p. 53.Google Scholar
33 14 July, p. 65.
34 The Evening Star, 2 07, p. 3Google Scholar; Darwin, II, p. 114Google Scholar; Huxley, I, p. 195.Google Scholar
35 Huxley, I, p. 195.Google Scholar
36 The Athenaeum, 7 07, p. 19Google Scholar; Lucas, , op. cit. (1), pp. 319, 323.Google Scholar
37 Lucas, , op. cit. (1), p. 330Google Scholar; Gilley, , op. cit. (1), p. 333.Google Scholar
38 Tuckwell, , op. cit (27), p. 55.Google Scholar See also Jackson Oxford's Journal, 7 07, p. 2Google Scholar; Letters of John Richard Green (ed. Stephen, Leslie), London, 1901, p. 44Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Green).
39 Altholz, , op. cit. (3), p. 316.Google Scholar
40 British Association Report, pp. 115–116Google Scholar; The Athenaeum, 14 07, pp. 64–65Google Scholar; Green, p. 44Google Scholar; Huxley Papers, vol. xvi, fol. 13.Google Scholar
41 The Evening Star, 2 07, p. 3.Google Scholar
42 According to Tuckwell, the chairman asked Huxley to comment, but the latter made the ‘sarcastic response that he certainly held a brief for Science, but had not yet heard it assailed’ (op. cot., 27, p. 53).
43 Wilberforce played a central role in the discussion following a report from David Livingstone in Africa (Jackson's Oxford Journal, 14 07, p. 2).Google Scholar
44 When journalists mentioned dignitaries at the conference, Bishop Wilberforce was one of them, so he was a central figure throughout (e.g., The Times, 28 06, p. 12Google Scholar; Jackson's Oxford Journal, 30 06, p. 4).Google Scholar Others on the platform (on the east side of the room) were Professor J.S. Henslow, the presiding officer, in the centre; to his right was Wilberforce, then Dr Draper. To Henslow's left was Huxley, Sir Benjamin Brodie, Prof. Beale, Lubbock, John, Hooker, Joseph and a MrDingle, (Huxley, I, pp. 195, 202).Google Scholar
45 Ibid., p. 197.
46 The Evening Star, 2 07, p. 3.Google Scholar
47 7 July, p. 19. See also The Press, 7 07, p. 656Google Scholar; The Evening Star, 2 07, p. 3Google Scholar; and Jackson's Oxford Journal, 7 07, p. 2.Google Scholar Actually, some supporters of Darwin, such as Lyell (Lyell, II, 333)Google Scholar and Henslow, J.S. (Macmillan's Magazine, III, 1861 02, p. 336)Google Scholar, insisted on referring to Darwin's hypothesis, not his theory.
48 (A.E. Ashwell) and Wilberforce, Reginald G., Life of the Right Reverend Samuel Wilberforce, D.D., vols, London, 1881, II, p. 449Google Scholar, (hereafter cited as Wilberforce). The Bishop was not as ill-informed as the Darwin camp contended, and their suspicion that Owen had coached Wilberforce was perhaps exaggerated. However, in 1887 Huxley finally felt that proof now did exist for the claim that Owen had indeed primed the Bishop at Oxford (Huxley Papers, vol. xli, fols. 133–134).Google Scholar
49 Phelps, Lynn A. and Cohen, Edwin, ‘The Wilberforce–Huxley Debate’, Western Speech, (1973), 37, pp. 57–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
50 Lucas, , op. cit. (1), pp. 317–322.Google Scholar
51 7 July, p. 656.
52 Ibid.; Green, p. 44.
53 Lyell, II, p. 335.Google Scholar Lucas, in his effort to rehabilitate Wilberforce, insists that ‘it cannot have been what was actually said’ (p. 324), and is, for instance, too quick to denigrate Lyell's account merely because it was second-hand and because Lyell had heard different versions. Actually, multiple versions, presumably trustworthy ones (even though likely pro-Darwin), reported to Lyell so soon after the event, and he, a highly trustworthy (though pro-Darwin) individual reporting so soon to his correspondent, could, on the contrary, add up to Lyell's version having a high probability of accuracy. Six months after Oxford, a writer in Macmillan's Magazine lamented that opponents of Darwinism would stoop ‘to ask a professor if he should object to discover that he had been developed out of an ape’ (Fawcett, , p. 88).Google Scholar
54 Rev. Freemantle, W.H.'s account: ‘I should like to ask Professor Huxley … 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?’ (Huxley, I, p. 200).Google Scholar Rev. A.S. Farrar's account: ‘If any one were to be willing to trace his descent through an ape as his grandfather, would he be willing to trace his descent similarly on the side of his grandmother?’ (Farrar's italics) (Huxley Papers, vol. xvi, fol. 14).Google Scholar Farrar felt that Wilberforce's words ‘did not appear vulgar, nor insolent, nor personal, but flippant’ (ibid., fol. 13).
55 ‘… was it through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey?’ (Macmillan's Magazine, 1898 10, p. 443).Google Scholar
56 ‘Then the Bishop spoke the speech that you know, and the question about his [Huxley's] mother being an ape, or his grandmother’ (Huxley, I, p. 196).Google Scholar
57 A.G. Vernon-Harcourt's account: ‘The Bishop had rallied your father as to the descent from a monkey, asking … how recent this had been, whether it was his grandfather or further back (ibid., p. 199).
58 Wilberforce, II, p. 451.Google Scholar See also Tuckwell, , op. cit. (27), p. 53.Google Scholar
59 Howarth, O.J.R., The British Association for the Advancement of Science: A Retrospect, 2nd edn, London, 1931, p. 63.Google Scholar
60 Huxley, I, p. 202.Google Scholar
61 Tuckwell, , op. cit. (27), pp. 54–55.Google Scholar
62 Green, p. 44.Google Scholar
63 7 July, p. 19. See also The Evening Star, 2 07, p. 3.Google Scholar One eyewitness reported that Huxley developed his contention with the following analogy: ‘Belated on a roadless common in a dark night, if a lantern were offered to me, should I refuse it because it shed imperfect light? I think not — I think not’ (Tuckwell, , op. cit. (27), p. 55).Google Scholar
64 7 July, p.656.
65 Green, p. 45.Google Scholar Both Huxley and Farrar claimed that the term ‘equivocal’ had not been used (Huxley, I, p. 199Google Scholar, n.; Huxley Papers, vol. xvi, fol. 14).Google Scholar On 4 July Lyell wrote his second-hand account to a friend: ‘Huxley replied (I heard several varying versions of this shindy), “that if he had his choice of an ancestor, whether it would be an ape, or one who having received a scholastic education, should use his logic to mislead an untutored public, and should treat not with argument but with ridicule the facts and reasoning adduced in support of a grave and serious philosophical question, he would not hesitate for a moment to prefer the ape”’ (Lyell, II, p. 335).Google Scholar
66 Huxley had immediately written a long account of the Oxford experience to Darwin (Darwin, to Huxley, , 5 07 1860Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, vol. 5, fol. 123)Google Scholar, but it has apparently been lost. Francis Darwin, working on his father's biography in 1886, wrote to Huxley, : ‘I wish I had some account of the celebrated Oxford meeting. It is a thousand pities that my father destroyed his letters. There seems to have been one from you …’ (Huxley Papers, vol. 13, fols. 44–45).Google Scholar
67 Huxley, to DrDyster, , 9 09 1860Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, vol. xv, fols 117–118Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Dyster). Until a portion of this letter was first brought to public view by Foskettin, D.J. 1963 in Nature, 172, p. 920CrossRefGoogle Scholar, it was assumed that Huxley had left no account of his retort. Portions of the letter can be found in Scientific American, CXC (1954), 12Google Scholar; The Scientific Monthly, LXXXIV (1957), pp. 171–172Google Scholar; Sirde Beer, Gavin, Charles Darwin: Evolution by Natural Selection, London, 1963, pp. 166–167Google Scholar; Hardin, Garrett, ed., Population, Evolution, and Birth Control: A Collage of Controversial Readings, San Francisco, 1964, pp. 154–155Google Scholar; Bibby, Cyril, The Essence of T.H. Huxley, London, 1967, pp. 12–13Google Scholar; Clark, Ronald W., The Huxleys, London, 1968, pp. 59–60.Google Scholar The phrasing mentioned by Huxley at the end of this letter to Dyster refused to die, and when Reginald Wilberforce included it in volume 2 (p. 451, line 7) of his biography of his father, Huxley insisted that the author correct it, which was done with the following errata placed in the beginning of volume 3 (1882): ‘“I would rather be descended from an ape than a bishop” ought to be “If I had to choose between being descended from an ape or from a man who would use his great powers of rhetoric to crush an argument, I should prefer the former”.
68 III, p. 88. Fawcett's account was: ‘The professor aptly replied to his assailant by remarking, that man's remote descent from an ape was not so degrading to his dignity as the employment of oratorical powers to misguide the multitude by throwing ridicule upon a scientific discussion’.
69 Huxley, I, pp. 197–202Google Scholar; Darwin, II, pp. 114–116.Google Scholar At the end of the century, Sidgwick reminisced that Huxley said: ‘He was not ashamed to have a monkey for his ancestor; but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used great gifts to obscure the truth’ (p. 434).
70 Hooker, Lubbock and Huxley were close friends, and from 1864 until their deaths were part of the nine-member ‘X Club’, which was a group of like-minded scientists who dined monthly in London. See Jensen, J. Vernon, ‘The X Club: fraternity of Victorian scientists’, The British Journal for the History of Science, (1970) 3, pp. 63–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘Interrelationships within the Victorian “X Club”’, Dalhousie Review, (1971–1972), 51, pp. 539–552.Google Scholar
71 Lucas, , op. cit. (1), p. 323.Google Scholar
72 The Athenaeum, 7 07, p. 19Google Scholar; The Evening Star, 2 07, p. 3Google Scholar; Jackson's Oxford Journal, 7 07, p. 2Google Scholar; John Bull, 7 07, p. 422.Google Scholar
73 14 July, p. 65. Length of space, of course, cannot necessarily be equated with the length or importance of the speeches. For example, in one instance The Athenaeum reported merely that ‘a long discussion ensued’ in which six listed individuals took part (ibid.,), and in another instance, that ‘a discussion ensued’ and the seven who took part were merely listed (ibid., p. 68). The usual factors in reporting no doubt played a role: which sectional meetings the reporters decided to attend, the degree of interest the reporters had in the subject, their degree of understanding of the subject, their attitude toward the subject and speakers, the degree of comfort of the reporter and the eventual editorial condensing and cutting.
74 Hooker, to Darwin, , 2 07 1860Google Scholar, in Huxley, Leonard, Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, 2 vols, London, 1918, I, p. 526Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Hooker). Hooker is described by a recent biographer as ‘nervous and highly strung and … sometimes hasty’ (Turrill, William Bertram, J.D. Hooker, Botanist, Explorer, and Administrator, London, 1963, p. 201)Google Scholar and by another writer as ‘very impulsive and somewhat peppery in temper’ (de Beer, Gavin, ed. and intro., Charles Darwin and Thomas Henry Huxley, Autobiographies, London, 1974, p. 62).Google Scholar
75 Huxley, I, p. 200.Google Scholar
76 The Athenaeum, 14 07, p. 65.Google Scholar
77 Hooker, 1, p. 526Google Scholar; Darwin, to Huxley, , 3 07Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, vol. v, fol. 121.Google Scholar Lyell's 4 July letter to Bunbury also stresses Hooker's effectiveness (Lyell, II, p. 335).Google Scholar
78 Farrar, to Huxley, Leonard, 7 07, 1899Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, vol. xvi, fol. 16Google Scholar (italics his). See also ibid., fol. 19. A recent church historian has stated it too strongly when he writes: ‘It is clear that the speech of J.D. Hooker, and not the speech of Huxley, made the big impression on the audience in countering the bishop's arguments … [Huxley] attacked rather the tone and rhetoric than the arguments, and contemporaries were agreed that the man who answered the arguments was Hooker’ (Chadwick, Owen, The Victorian Church, London, 1966, 2 vols., II, pp. 10–11).Google Scholar One eyewitness, W. Tuckwell, later wrote that ‘Hooker led the devotees’ (op. cit. (27), p. 56 of Darwin, but that means after Huxley had spoken.
79 Huxley Papers, vol. xvi, fol. 19.Google Scholar See also fol. 15.
80 The Evening Star, 2 07, p. 3Google Scholar; Jackson's Oxford Journal, 7 07, p. 2Google Scholar; John Bull, 7 07, p. 422.Google Scholar
81 See the accounts, for example, by Green, Sidgwick, and Vernon-Harcourt.
82 Huxley Papers, vol. xv, fol. 117.Google Scholar Italics mine.
83 SirDuff, Mountstuart E. Grant, Notes from a Diary, 1851–1872, 2 vols, London, 1897, 1, p. 139.Google Scholar
84 Tuckwell, , op. cit. (27), p. 56.Google Scholar
85 Ibid.; Hooker, I, p. 527.Google Scholar
86 Ellegard, Alvar, ‘Public opinion and the press: reactions to Darwinism,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, (1958), 19, pp. 379–387.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
87 30 June, p. 5.
88 2 July, p. 3.
89 Green, p. 44.Google Scholar
90 Lyell, II, p. 335.Google Scholar
91 Since the tightly packed room ‘was crowded to suffocation long before the protagonists appeared’ (Huxley, I, p. 195)Google Scholar, the ‘debate’ perhaps should not be given full credit for that effect!
92 Sidgwick, , op. cit. (32), pp. 425, 434.Google Scholar She was about 25 years old at the time.
93 Huxley Papers, vol. xvi, fol. 15.Google Scholar Somehow, published versions of this portion of Farrar's letter have inaccurately inserted the adjective ‘perfect’ before ‘gentleman’.
94 Huxley Papers, vol. xv, fol. 118.Google Scholar
95 Huxley, I, pp. 203–204.Google Scholar It seems that Lucas, (op. cit. 1, p. 323)Google Scholar is straining considerably when he cites Foster's account as a piece of evidence for the claim that at the end of the debate the majority were with Wilberforce.
96 Huxley, I, 201.Google Scholar
97 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Samuel Wilberforce Diary, Dep. e. 327. I am indebted to Mary Clapinson, Keeper of Western Manuscripts, Bodleian Library, for her assistance in securing a photocopy of a portion of the Wilberforce Diary and for securing permission for me to use it.
98 Altholz, , op. cit. (3), p. 315.Google Scholar
99 Supra, note 3.
100 Huxley, I, p. 202.Google Scholar
101 Wilberforce, II, pp. 450–451.Google Scholar
102 7 July, p. 422. The italics are mine, to call attention to the similarity in wording to the Freemantle account (supra, p. lb), but from the opposite point of view.
103 Huxley, I, p. 203.Google Scholar
104 7 July, p. 19.
105 Darwin, II, pp. 101, 112, 117Google Scholar; Huxley Papers, vol. v, fol. 122.Google Scholar
106 Darwin, II, pp. 116–117.Google Scholar
107 Ibid., p. 117; Huxley Papers, vol. v, fol. 121.Google Scholar Darwin went on to chide Huxley: ‘But how durst you attack a live Bishop in that fashion? I am quite ashamed of you!’ (ibid., fol. 123).
108 Sirde Beer, Gavin, Charles Darwin: Evolution by Natural Selection, p. 166.Google Scholar
109 Tuckwell, , op. cit. (27), p. 53.Google Scholar
110 The Times, 29 11 1887.Google Scholar (Huxley Papers, vol. xli, fol. 133).Google Scholar
111 Altholz, , op. cit. (3), p. 315.Google Scholar See also Huxley, I, p. 196Google Scholar; Tuckwell, , op. cit. (27), p. 53.Google Scholar
112 Huxley Papers, vol. xvi, fol. 13.Google Scholar
113 British Association Report, p. 136Google Scholar; The Athenaeum, 7 07, p. 28.Google Scholar
114 An early evolutionist, Chambers had published anonymously in 1844 a highly controversial and not so highly respected treatise on evolution, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.
115 Indeed, in his diary for Saturday, 30 June, Huxley has recorded departure times for the train to Reading (Huxley Papers, vol. lxx, fol. 3).Google Scholar
116 Huxley, I, p. 202.Google Scholar
117 Darwin, II, p. 101.Google Scholar
118 Darwin, to Huxley, , 3 07 1860Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, vol. v, fol. 121.Google Scholar See also fol. 122.
119 Darwin, II, p. 101.Google Scholar
120 Darwin, to Huxley, , 5 07 20 07, 1860Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, vol. v, fols 124, 126.Google Scholar
121 Darwin, II, pp. 109, 120, 124.Google Scholar
122 Altholz, , op. cit. (3), p. 315.Google Scholar
123 Green, p. 44.Google Scholar
124 Huxley, I, p. 203.Google Scholar
125 Huxley Papers, vol. xv, fols 117–118.Google Scholar
126 Huxley, to Hooker, , 6 08 1860Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, vol. ii, fol. 73.Google Scholar
127 7 July, p. 656.
128 Tuckwell, , op. cit. (27), p. 56.Google Scholar
129 Darwin, II, p. 147.Google Scholar
130 Fawcett, , p. 81.Google Scholar
131 As quoted in Howarth, , op. cit. (59), pp. 41–42.Google Scholar
132 See Jensen, J. Vernon, ‘“The most intimate and trusted friend I have”: a note on Ellen Busk, young T.H. Huxley's confidante’, Historical Studies (Melbourne), 17, (1977), pp. 315–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar To cite two examples, Huxley was not selected in 1853 for a position at King's College, London (Law, J.W.C. to Huxley, , 13 05 1853Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, vol. xxi, fol. 175)Google Scholar, and his religious views were a negative factor in applying for a chair at Oxford in 1856 (Huxley, to [Frederick James] Furnival, 24 11 1856Google Scholar, San Marino, California, Huntington Library, Huntington MSS: FU 429).
133 Lucas, (op. cit., 1, p. 329)Google Scholar notes that ‘The Darwinians, who were a small minority in 1860, became the dominant majority over the next twenty years, but never lost the sense of being persecuted’.
134 Darwin, II, pp. 113–114.Google Scholar
135 Huxley, I, pp. 196–204.Google Scholar
136 Clodd, Edward, Thomas Henry Huxley, New York, pp. 20–23Google Scholar; Davis, J.R. Ainsworth, Thomas H. Huxley, London, pp. 52–54Google Scholar; Ayres, Clarence, Huxley, New York, 1932, pp. 50–52Google Scholar; Irvine, William, Apes, Angels, and Victorians: Darwin, Huxley, and Evolution, Cleveland, pp. 3–8Google Scholar; Bibby, Cyril, The Essence of T. Huxley, London, 1967, p. 157Google Scholar; Clark, Ronald W., The Huxleys, London, 1968, pp. 54–62Google Scholar; Bibby, Cyril, Scientist Extraordinary: The Life and Scientific Work of Thomas Henry Huxley, Oxford, 1972, pp. 40–41Google Scholar; Beer, , Darwin and Huxley: Autobiograpies, p. xiii.Google Scholar More judicious biographical accounts are Ashforth, Albert, Thomas Henry Huxley, New York, 1969, pp. 34–38Google Scholar; Paradis, James G., T.H. Huxley: Man's Place in Nature, Lincoln, 1978, pp. 37, 43.Google Scholar
137 Barlow, , op. cit. (20), p. 209, n. 1.Google Scholar
138 Phelps, and Cohen, , op. cit. (49), p. 60.Google Scholar The authors also show their pro-Huxley bias in the way in which they refer to the sons who wrote their fathers' biographies: Reginald Wilberforce is ‘the reverend's son and therefore not an altogether objective source’, (ibid.) but Leonard Huxley is simply ‘Huxley's son and biographer’ (p. 61).
139 Howarth, , op. cit. (59), p. 65.Google Scholar
140 Edwards, David L., Leaders of the Church of England, 1828–1944, London, 1971, p. 103.Google Scholar
141 Gilley, and Loades, , op. cit. (1), p. 289.Google Scholar James R. Moore in his The Post-Darwinian Controversies, provides an excellent analysis of the deleterious role of the military metaphor, passim.
142 Page 1. The plaque outside an entrance to what was the library states more objectively: ‘A meeting of the British Association held 30 June 1860 within this door was the scene of the memorable debate on evolution between Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, and Thomas Henry Huxley’.
143 This impression of mine when I viewed the programme is the same as that expressed by Lucas, , op. cit. (1), p. 313Google Scholar, Gilley, , op. cit. (1), p. 325Google Scholar and Gilley, and Loades, , op. cit. (1), p. 285.Google Scholar
144 Green, p. 44.Google Scholar
145 Huxley, I, p. 200.Google Scholar
146 Ibid., p. 199.
147 7 July, p.18.
148 MacLeod, Roy, ‘Introduction, on the advancement of science’, in The Parliament of Science: The British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1831–1981 (ed. MacLeod, Roy and Collins, Peter), Northwood, 1981, p. 22.Google Scholar
149 Lyell, II, p. 329.Google Scholar
150 However, Huxley in his April Westminster Review article had defended Darwin against being called an ape, so Huxley no doubt took this Oxford item as a repeated taunt and hence no longer funny.
151 Huxley, to Dyster, , 9 09 1860Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, vol. xv, fol. 117.Google Scholar
152 Ibid., fol. 116.
153 Letters of praise, such as the following one from a friend in Edinburgh shortly after Oxford, no doubt kept Huxley's spirit high. ‘I hear you pitched into the Bishop of Oxford in grand style. I should have rejoiced to have been [there]’ (Allman, George J. to Huxley, , 9 07, 1860Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, vol. x, fol. 79).Google Scholar
154 It could have been a father–son relationship not only in age but even in looks, and indeed, one stranger that week had thought Huxley was the Bishop's son (Huxley, I, p. 198, n.).Google Scholar For photographs of Huxley in 1857 and of Wilberforce, see de Beer, , Darwin, Huxley, Autobiographies, pp. 86, 102.Google Scholar For a photograph of Huxley taken at the British Association meeting in 1860, see Tuckwell, , op. cit. (27), p. 55.Google Scholar
155 Actually, he was cognizant of its importance ever since his maiden public lecture in 1852 at the Royal Institution (Jensen, J. Vernon, ‘Thomas Henry Huxley's “baptism into oratory”’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, (1976), 30, pp. 181–207).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
156 Huxley, I, p. 193.Google Scholar
157 Altholz, , op.cit. (3), p. 313.Google Scholar
158 Gilley, and Loades, , op. cit. (1), p. 294.Google Scholar
159 For example, on Wednesday, 4 July, the Bishop was in the chair at the annual meeting of Queen's College, London (Bodleian, , Wilberforce, Samuel Diary, Dep. e. 327Google Scholar; John Bull, 7 07 1860, p. 422)Google Scholar, and on Friday the 6th, he was in the House of Lords urging that the Bible should be introduced into the Government Schools in India (ibid., p. 432; Jackson's Oxford Journal, 14 07 1860, p. 3).Google Scholar
160 Wilberforce, II, 450–451.Google Scholar
161 Meacham, Standish, Lord Bishop: The Life of Samuel Wilberforce, 1850–1873, Cambridge, Mass., 1970, pp. 215–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
162 This was the first issue of a publication which Huxley helped to found.
163 Oxford, Bodleian Library, 3 01, 1861Google Scholar, MS Wilberforce, C13, fols 1–2. This also has been published in Clark, , op. cit. (67), pp. 61–62Google Scholar (but misdated as June), and in Bibby, , op. cit. (136)Google Scholar, Scientist Extraordinary, p. 46.Google Scholar
164 Trevelyan, George Macaulay, The Life of John Bright, Boston, 1913, p. 38.Google Scholar
165 Wilberforce, to Huxley, , 30 01Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, vol. xxix, fol. 25.Google Scholar
166 29 November and 1 December 1887, in Huxley Papers, vol. xli, fols 133–134.Google Scholar They were still debating who won in 1860. Reginald Wilberforce wrote: ‘Did the lash of Bishop Wilberforce's eloquence sting so sharply that, though 27 years have passed, the recollection of the castigation then received is as fresh as ever?’ Huxley quickly responded: ‘Those who were present at the famous meeting in Oxford … will doubtless agree with him [R. Wilberforce] that an effectual castigation was received by somebody. But I have too much respect for filial piety, however indiscreet its manifestations, to trouble you with evidence as to who was the agent and who the patient in that operation’.
167 2 July, p.3.
168 Tuckwell, , op. cit. (27), p. 57.Google Scholar
169 Morrell, and Thackray, , op. cit. (25), p. 395.Google Scholar
170 Lucas, , op. cit. (1), p. 330.Google Scholar
171 Morrell, and Thackray, , op. cit. (25), p. 395.Google Scholar
172 Ibid.
173 Dupree, A. Hunter, Asa Gray, Cambridge, Mass., 1959, p. 294.Google Scholar
174 Gilley, and Loades, , op. cit. (1), p. 289.Google Scholar
175 British Association Report, p. lxxv.Google Scholar See also The Athenaeum, 30 06, p. 891.Google Scholar
176 Ellegard, Alvar, Darwin and the General Reader: The Reception of Darwin's Theory of Evolution the British Periodical Press, 1859–1872, Goteborg, 1958, pp. 63–64.Google Scholar
177 More Letters, I, pp. 156–157.Google Scholar
178 Huxley, I, p. 204Google Scholar, See also Howarth, , op. cit. (59), p. 65.Google Scholar
- 29
- Cited by