The facts of variability, of the struggle for
existence, of adaptation to conditions, were notorious enough, but none
of us had suspected that the road to the heart of the species problem
lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the darkness, and
the beacon-fire of the Origin guided the benighted."
But the disciple soon outstripped the master. As was said of Luther in
relation to Erasmus, Huxley hatched the egg that Darwin laid. For in the
Origin of Species the theory was not pushed to its obvious conclusion:
Darwin only hinted that it "would throw much light on the origin of
man and his history." His silence, as he candidly tells us in the
Introduction to the Descent of Man, was due to a desire "not to add to
the prejudices against his views." No such hesitancy kept Huxley silent.
In the spirit of Plato's Laws, he followed the argument whithersoever it
led. In 1860 he delivered a course of lectures to working-men On the
Relations of Man to the Lower Animals, and in 1862, a couple of lectures
on the same subject at the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution.
The important and significant feature of these discourses was the
demonstration that no cerebral barrier divides man from apes; that
the attempt to draw a psychical distinction between him and the lower
animals is futile; and that "even the highest faculties of feeling and
of intellect begin to germinate in lower forms of life." The lectures
were published in 1863 in a volume entitled Evidence as to Man's Place
in Nature; and it was with pride warranted by the results of subsequent
researches that Huxley, in a letter to the writer, thus refers to the
book when arranging for its reissue among the Collected Essays--
I was looking through Man's Place in Nature the other day. I do not
think there is a word I need delete, nor anything I need add, except
in confirmation and extension of the doctrine there laid down. That
is great good fortune for a book thirty years old, and one that a
very shrewd friend of mine implored me not to publish, as it would
certainly ruin all my prospects.
The sparse annotations to the whole series of reprinted matter show that
the like permanence attends all his writings. And yet, true workman,
with ideal ever lying ahead, as he was, he remarked to the writer that
never did a book come hot from the press, but he wished that he could
suppress it and rewrite it.
But before dealing with the momentous issues raised in Man's Place in
Nature, we must return to 1860. For that was the "Sturm und Drang"
period. Then, at Oxford, "home of lost causes," as Matthew Arnold
apostrophizes her in the Preface to his Essays in Criticism, was fought,
on Saturday, 30th of June, a memorable duel between biologist and
bishop; perhaps in its issues, more memorable than the historic
discussion on the traditional doctrine of special creation between
Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in the French Academy in 1830.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account