Such words, written before 1849, only differ from those that would have been written by a convinced evolutionist by a hair's breadth. But Huxley was not an evolutionist then: it was Darwin's work, containing a new exposition of evolution and the new principle of natural selection, that convinced him, not of natural selection but of evolution. At Oxford, in 1860, it was for evolution, and not for natural selection, that he spoke; and throughout his life afterwards, as he expressed it, it was this "ancient doctrine of evolution, rehabilitated and placed upon a sound scientific foundation, since, and in consequence of, the publication of _The Origin of Species_," that furnished him with the chief inspiration of his work. The clear accuracy of his original judgment upon Darwin's work has been abundantly justified by subsequent history. Since 1859 the case for evolution has become stronger and stronger until it can no longer be regarded as one of two possible hypotheses in the field, but as the only view credible to those who have even a moderate acquaintance with the facts. In 1894, thirty years after the famous meeting at Oxford, the British Association again met in that historic town. The President, Lord Salisbury, a devout Churchman and with a notably critical intellect, declared of Darwin: "He has, as a matter of fact, disposed of the doctrine of the immutability of species.... Few now are found to doubt that animals separated by differences far exceeding those that distinguish what we know as species have yet descended from common ancestors." Huxley, in replying to the address, used the following words: "As he noted in the Presidential Address to which they had just listened with such well deserved interest, he found it stated, on what was then and at this time the highest authority for them, that as a matter of fact the doctrine of the immutability of species was disposed of and gone. He found that few were now found to doubt that animals separated by differences far exceeding those which they knew as species were yet descended from a common ancestry. Those were their propositions; those were the fundamental principles of the doctrine of evolution." On the other hand, Huxley all through his life, while holding that natural selection was by far the most probable hypothesis as to the mode in which evolution had come about, maintained that it was only a hypothesis, and, unlike evolution, not a proved fact. In 1863, in a course of lectures to workingmen, he declared: