Huxley demolished his card house point by point, correcting the gross misstatements, and ending by saying that since a question of personal preferences had been brought into the discussion of a great scientific theme, he would confess that if the alternatives were a descent on the one hand from a respectable monkey, or on the other from a Bishop of the Church of England who could stoop to misrepresentation and sophistry and who had attempted in that presence to throw discredit upon a man who had given his life to the cause of science, then if forced to decide he would declare in favor of the monkey. When Huxley took his seat, there was a silence that could be felt. Several ladies fainted. There were fears that the Bishop would reply, and to keep down such a possible unpleasant move the audience now applauded Huxley roundly, and amid the din the chairman declared the meeting adjourned. From that time forward Huxley was famous throughout England as a man to let alone in public debate. * * * * * It is a fine thing to be a great scientist, but it is a yet finer thing to be a great man. The one element in Huxley's life that makes his character stand out clear, sharp and well defined was his steadfast devotion to truth. The only thing he feared was self-deception. When he uttered his classic cry in defense of Darwin, there was no ulterior motive in it; no thought that he was attaching himself to a popular success; no idea that he was linking his name with greatness. What he felt was true, he uttered; and the strongest desire of his soul was that he might never compromise with the error for the sake of mental ease, or accept a belief simply because it was pleasant. Huxley once wrote this terse sentence of Gladstone: "It is to me a serious thing that the destinies of this great country should at present be to a great extent in the hands of a man who, whatever he may be in the affairs of which I am no judge, is nothing but a copious shuffler in those that I do understand." Gladstone crossed swords with Huxley, Spencer and Robert Ingersoll, and in each case his blundering intellect looked like a raft of logs compared with a steamboat that responds to the helm. Gladstone was a man of action, and silence to such is most becoming. He had a belief, that was enough; he should have hugged it close, and never stood up to explain it. Let us vary a simile just used: Lincoln once referred to an opponent as being "like a certain steamboat that ran on the Sangamon. This boat had so big a whistle that when she blew it, there wasn't steam enough to make her run, and when she ran she couldn't whistle." Huxley, Spencer and Robert Ingersoll, all made Gladstone cut for the woods and cover his retreat in a cloud of words. Ingersoll once said that in replying to Gladstone he felt like a man who had been guilty of cruelty to children.