Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1Huxley, Thomas Henry
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Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895; Naturalists -- England -- Biography
The result of this encounter, though a check to the other side, cannot,
of course, be represented as an immediate and complete triumph for
evolutionary doctrine. This was precluded by the character and temper of
the audience, most of whom were less capable of being convinced by the
arguments than shocked by the boldness of the retort, although, being
gentlefolk, as Professor Farrar remarks, they were disposed to admit on
reflection that the Bishop had erred on the score of taste and good
manners. Nevertheless, it was a noticeable feature of the occasion, Sir
M. Foster tells me, that when Huxley rose he was received coldly, just a
cheer of encouragement from his friends, the audience as a whole not
joining in it. But as he made his points the applause grew and widened,
until, when he sat down, the cheering was not very much less than that
given to the Bishop. To that extent he carried an unwilling audience
with him by the force of his speech. The debate on the ape question,
however, was continued elsewhere during the next two years, and the
evidence was completed by the unanswerable demonstrations of Sir W.H.
Flower at the Cambridge meeting of the Association in 1862.
The importance of the Oxford meeting lay in the open resistance that was
made to authority, at a moment when even a drawn battle was hardly less
effectual than acknowledged victory. Instead of being crushed under
ridicule, the new theories secured a hearing, all the wider, indeed, for
the startling nature of their defence.]
CHAPTER 1.15.
1860-1863.
[In the autumn he set to work to make good his promise of demonstrating
the existence in the simian brain of the structures alleged to be
exclusively human. The result was seen in his papers "On the Zoological
Relations of Man with the Lower Animals" ("Natural History Review" 1861
pages 67-68); "On the Brain of Ateles Paniscus," which appeared in the
"Proceedings of the Zoological Society" for 1861, and on "Nyctipithecus"
in 1862, while similar work was undertaken by his friends Rolleston and
Flower. But the brain was only one point among many, as, for example,
the hand and the foot in man and the apes; and he already had in mind
the discussion of the whole question comprehensively. On January 6 he
writes to Sir J. Hooker:--]
Some of these days I shall look up the ape question again and go over
the rest of the organisation in the same way. But in order to get a
thorough grip of the question I must examine into a good many points for
myself. The results, when they do come out, will, I foresee, astonish
the natives.
[Full of interest in this theme, he made it the subject of his popular
lectures in the spring of 1861.
Thus from February to May he lectured weekly to working men on "The
Relation of Man to the rest of the Animal Kingdom," and on March 22
writes to his wife:--]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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