Life and Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 2Darwin, Charles
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Life and Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 2
Darwin, Charles
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882; Naturalists -- Great Britain -- Biography; Naturalists -- Great Britain -- Correspondence
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 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 be a MAN, a man of
restless and versatile intellect, who, not content with an equivocal
(Prof. V. Carus, who has a distinct recollection of the scene, does not
remember the word equivocal. He believes too that Lyell's version of
the "ape" sentence is slightly incorrect.) 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."
The letter above quoted continues:
"The excitement was now at its height; a lady fainted and had to be
carried out, and it was some time before the discussion was resumed.
Some voices called for Hooker, and his name having been handed up, the
President invited him to give his view of the theory from the Botanical
side. This he did, demonstrating that the Bishop, by his own showing,
had never grasped the principles of the 'Origin' (With regard to the
Bishop's 'Quarterly Review,' my father wrote: "These very clever men
think they can write a review with a very slight knowledge of the book
reviewed or subject in question."), and that he was absolutely ignorant
of the elements of botanical science. The Bishop made no reply, and the
meeting broke up.
"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.]
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Sudbrook Park, Monday night [July 2nd,
1860].
My dear Hooker,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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