"I am sharpening my claws and beak in readiness." Huxley was absolutely right in his prediction as to the magnitude of the prejudices to be overcome before evolution became accepted, and for the next thirty years of his life he was the leader in the battle for Darwinism. It was natural that the new views, especially in their extension to man himself, should arouse the keenest opposition. To those of the present generation, who have grown up in an atmosphere impregnated by the doctrine of descent, the position of the world in 1860 seems "older than a tale written in any book." As we have tried to shew in the preceding chapter, biological science was partially prepared; the mutability of species and the orderly succession of organic life were in the air. But the application of the doctrine to man came as a greater shock to civilised sentiment than would have occurred a century earlier. It came as a disaster even to the clearest and calmest intellects, for it seemed to drag down to the dirt the nobility of man. Out of the fierce flame of the French Revolution, there had come purged and clean the conception of man as an individual and soul. As this century advanced, the conception of the dignity and worth of each individual man, rich or poor, bond or free, had spread more and more widely, bearing as its fruit the emancipation of slaves, the spread of political freedom, the amelioration of the conditions of the dregs of humanity, the right of all to education, the possibility of universal peace based on the brotherhood of man; and all that was best in philosophy and in political practice seemed bound up with a lofty view of the unit of mankind. Carlyle himself, to whom many of the freest and noblest spirits in Europe were beginning to look as to an inspired prophet, could see in it nothing but a "monkey damnification of mankind." The dogmatic world saw in it nothing but a deliberate and malicious assault upon religion. The Church of England in particular was beginning to recover from a long period of almost incredible supineness, and there was arising a large body of clergy full of faith and zeal and good works, but quite unacquainted with science, who frankly regarded Darwin as Antichrist, and Huxley and Tyndall as emissaries of the devil. Against evolutionists there was left unused no weapon that ignorant prejudice could find, whether that prejudice was inspired by a lofty zeal for what it conceived to be the highest interests of humanity, or by a crafty policy which saw in the new doctrine a blow to the coming renewed supremacy of the Church. To us, now, it may seem that Huxley had "sharpened his beak and claws" with the spirit of a gladiator rather than with that of the mere defender of a scientific doctrine; but a very short study of contemporary literature will convince anyone that for a time the defenders of evolution had to defend not only what they knew to be scientific truth, but their personal and private reputation. The new