Wilberforce and Huxley: A Legendary Encounter
J. R. LUCAS
The legend of the encounter between Wilberforce and
Huxley is well established. Almost every scientist knows,
and every viewer of the BBC's recent programme on
Darwin was shown,* how
Samuel Wilberforce, bishop of Oxford, attempted to pour
scorn on Darwin's Origin of Species at a meeting of the
British Association in Oxford on 30 June 1860, and had
the tables turned on him by T. H. Huxley. In this
memorable encounter Huxley's simple scientific sincerity
humbled the prelatical insolence and clerical
obscurantism of Soapy Sam; the pretension of the
Church to dictate to scientists the conclusions they were
allowed to reach were, for good and all, decisively
defeated; the autonomy of science was established in
Britain and the Western world; the claim of plain
unvarnished truth on men's allegiance was vindicated,
however unwelcome its implications for human vanity might
be; and the flood tide of Victorian faith in all its
fulsomeness was turned to an ebb, which has continued to
our present day and will only end when religion and
superstition have been finally eliminated from the minds
of all enlightened men. Even churchmen concede that it
was a disastrous defeat.1
Only Owen Chadwick strikes a note of caution, observing
that the account given of the incident in Wilberforce's
biography seems hardly consistent with an overwhelming
defeat, and maintaining that the received account must be
a largely legendary creation of a later date.2
The legend is well given in the October 1898 issue of
Macmillan's Magazine, in an article entitled `A
Grandmother's tales'.3
In the course of this, sandwiched in between reminiscences
of Florence and an incident in Merton library, the writer
relates
I was happy enough to be present on the memorable
occasion at Oxford when Mr Huxley bearded Bishop
Wilberforce. There were so many of us that were
eager to hear that we had to adjourn to the great library
of the Museum. I can still hear the American accents of
Dr Draper's opening address, when he asked `Air we a
fortuitous concourse of atoms?' and his discourse I seem
to remember somewhat dry. Then the Bishop rose, and in a
light scoffing tone, florid and he assured us there was
nothing in the idea of evolution; rock-pigeons were
what rock-pigeons had always been. Then, turning to his
antagonist with a smiling insolence, he begged to know,
was it through his grandfather or his grandmother that he
claimed his descent from a monkey? On this Mr Huxley
slowly and deliberately arose. A slight tall figure
stern and pale, very quiet and very grave, he stood
before us, and spoke those tremendous words - words which
no one seems sure of now, nor I think, could remember
just after they were spoken, for their meaning took away
our breath, though it left us in no doubt as to what it
was. He was not ashamed to have a monkey for his
ancestor; but he would be ashamed to be connected
with a man who used great gifts to obscure the truth. No
one doubted his meaning and the effect was tremendous.
One lady fainted and had to carried out: I, for one,
jumped out of my seat; and when in the evening we met
at Dr Daubeney's, every one was eager to congratulate the
hero of the day. I remember that some naive person
wished it could come over again; and Mr Huxley, with
the look on his face of the victor who feels the cost of
victory, put us aside saying, `Once in a life-time is
enough, if not too much.'
Sir Joseph Hooker supplied substantially similar accounts
for the official biographies of Darwin4 and Huxley.5 He tells us
The famous Oxford Meeting of 1860 was of no small
importance in Huxley's career. It was not merely that he
helped to save a great cause from being stifled under
misrepresentation and ridicule - that he helped to extort
for it a fair hearing; it was now that he first made
himself known in popular estimation as a dangerous
adversary in debate - a personal force in the world of
science which could not be neglected. From this moment
he entered the front fighting line in the most exposed
quarter of the field.6
The biography continues, after an account of the
session on Thursday afternoon
Accordingly it was to him, thus marked out as the
champion of the most debatable thesis of evolution, that,
two days later, the Bishop addressed his sarcasms, only
to meet with a withering retort. For on the Friday there
was peace; but on the Saturday came a yet fiercer
battle over the `Origin' which loomed all the
larger in the public eye, because it was not merely the
contradiction of one anatomist by another, but the open
clash between Science and the Church. It was, moreover,
not a contest of bare fact or abstract assertion, but a
combat of wit between the individuals, spiced with the
personal element which appeals to one of the strongest
instincts of every large audience.7
Other versions from the end of the nineteenth century
exist.8 They do not agree
on details, but for the most part convey the same general
impression. Some of them bewail the fact that
contemporary accounts are few and fragmentary. But they
do exist. Besides a number of letters to and from people
in the Darwinian camp,9 we
have a journalist's report of the proceedings of the
British Association in three issues of The
Athenaeum, and a briefer one in Jackon's Oxford
Journal.10 These
accounts give a different picture.
Neither of the journalists present reported those
tremendous words or noted their tremendous effect.
Although the opposed views of Wilberforce and Huxley on
the nature of man were of great moment, and had been the
topic of conversation throughout the week, and although
the particular issue of the descent of man from the apes
had been raised a couple of days earlier,11 and although undoubtedly
Wilberforce made some reference to apes, yet what he and
Huxley actually said on that subject was not, in the
opinion of a journalist actually reporting the debate, of
sufficient interest to bear repetition.
Nor did it seem the next day sufficiently significant
for Hooker to mention it in his letter to Darwin.12
In Hooker's opinion - and the evidence of The
Athenaeum and the opinion of Lyell13 support this - it was he, not
Huxley, who really answered Wilberforce.
Hooker had become a Darwinian and announced his
conversion at that meeting.
He wrote unflatteringly of Wilberforce, and then
continued
Huxley answered admirably and turned the tables, but he
could not throw his voice over so large an assembly, nor
command the audience; and he did not allude to Sam's
weak points nor put the matter in a form or way that
carried the audience. The battle waxed hot. Lady
Brewster fainted, the excitement increased as others
spoke; my blood boiled, I felt myself a dastard;
now I saw
my advantage; I swore to myself that I would smite
that Amalekite, Sam, hip and thigh if my heart jumped out
of my mouth, and I handed my name up to the President
(Henslow) as ready to throw down the gauntlet.
Although later he gave all the credit to Huxley, at the
time it seemed to him and to others that it was he rather
than Huxley who fought most effectively for Darwin.
The British Association has always been in part
concerned to popularize science. It draws large
audiences, consisting to a considerable extent, of people
more interested in science than knowledgeable; and
the worst that can ever be said of one of its annual
meetings is that it was dull. This could not be said of
its meeting in Oxford in 1860. It was, according to
The Athenaeum, an enormous success.
Yet the main interest of the week has unquestionably
centred in the Sections, where the intellectual
activities have sometimes breathed over the courtesies of
life like a sou'-wester, cresting the waves of
conversation with white and brilliant foam. The flash,
and play, and collisions in these sections have been as
interesting and amusing to the audiences as the Battle at
Farnborough or the Volunteer Review to the general
British Public. The Bishop of Oxford has been famous in
these intellectual contests, but Dr Whewell, Lord Talbot
de Malahide, Prof. Sedgwick, Mr Crawford, and Prof.
Huxley have each found foemen worth of their steel, and
have made their charges and countercharges very much to
their own satisfaction and the delight of their
respective friends. The chief cause of contention has
been the new theory of the Development of Species by
Natural Selection - a theory open - like the Zoological
Gardens (from a particular cage in which it draws so many
laughable illustrations) to a good deal of personal
quizzing, without, however, seriously crippling the
usefulness of the physiological investigation on which it
rests. The Bishop of Oxford came out strongly against a
theory which holds it possible that man may be descended
from an ape - in which protest he is sustained by Prof.
Owen, Sir Benjamin Brodie, Dr Daubeny, and the most
eminent naturalists assembled at Oxford. But others -
conspicuous among them Prof. Huxley - have expressed
their willingness to accept, for themselves as well as
for their friends and enemies, all actual truths, even
the last humiliating truth of a pedigree not registered
in the Herald's College. The dispute has at least made
Oxford uncommonly lively during the week.14
It was as a good as a good Union debate. We can
sympathize with Huxley's reluctance to perform in such a
setting, though not with his way of expressing himself.
Two days earlier, `Prof. Huxley, having been called on by
the Chairman, deprecated any discussion on the general
question of the truth of Mr Darwin's theory. He felt that
a general audience, in which sentiment would unduly
interfere with intellect, was not the public before which
such a discussion should be carried on. Dr Daubeny had
brought forth nothing new to demand or require remark.15 Huxley was being rather
rude. Later accounts of the Saturday session state that
the audience was initially hostile to Huxley, and suggest
it was due to clerical
partisanship. But some of those present may have been
feeling unduly deprecated. Again, later accounts suggest
that Huxley by his bearding of the bishop on the Saturday
had secured at least a hearing for Darwinism.16 But this is the reverse of the
truth: every one wanted to hear about Darwinism;
Darwin himself could not be there on account of his
health, and it was naturally to Huxley, as a leading
protagonist on the Darwinian side, that people turned for
a defence of Darwin's views. Before turning to
Wilberforce, the chairman had invited Huxley to speak,
only to be met with a sarcastic response.17 We can sympathize with the
organizers, who finding Huxley in turn coy and
belligerent, may well have wanted Wilberforce, who was
something of an ornithologist18 and a Vice-President of the British
Association, to put across some of the main points at
issue. One of the complaints against Wilberforce was
that he, no scientist himself, presumed to speak of
scientific matters. It should be remembered that what
was required on that occasion was not so much a first-
hand knowledge of scientific enquiry as an ability to
communicate with an audience larger than a full House of
Commons. Huxley, too, although he did not see himself as
a gladiator, did gladiate. His interventions were not
always courteous19 or
relevant.20 And if
Wilberforce was to be taken to task for being humorous,
it is well to remember that Huxley, too, had tried his
hand at humour.21
Five weeks earlier Wilberforce had written22 a review of Darwin's Origin of
species, which was published in the July issue of
The Quarterly Review.23 His speech was a condensed version
of the review.24 Two
passages of the review are of crucial importance, and
show that Wilberforce, contrary to the central tenet of
the legend, did not prejudge the issue. The main bulk of
the review25 is given over
to an entirely scientific assessment of Darwin's Theory.
We may not like his conclusions, he says at the outset,
But we are too loyal pupils of inductive philosophy to
start back from any conclusion by reason of its
strangeness. Newton's patient philosophy taught him
to find in the falling apple the law which governs the
silent movements of the stars in their courses; and
if Mr Darwin can with the same correctness of reasoning
demonstrate to us our fungular descent, we shall dismiss
our pride, and avow, with the characteristic humility of
philosophy, our unsuspected cousinship with the
mushrooms, -
`Claim kindred there, and have our claim allowed'
- only we shall ask leave to scrutinise carefully every
step of the argument which has such an ending, and demur
if at any point of it we are invited to substitute
unlimited hypothesis for patient observation, or the
spasmodic fluttering flight of fancy for the severe
conclusions to which logical accuracy of reasoning has
led the way.26
And he sums up his scientific criticisms with a warning
against obscurantism that is as explicit as any one could
want.
Our readers will not have failed to notice that we have
objected to the views with which we are dealing solely on
scientific grounds. We have done so from our fixed
conviction that it is thus that the truth or falsehood of
such arguments should be tried. We have no sympathy with
those who object to any facts or alleged facts in nature,
or to any inference logically deduced from them, because
they believe them to contradict what it appears to them
is taught by Revelation. We think that all such
objections savour of a timidity which is really
inconsistent with a firm and well-intrusted faith.27
On the strength of the review it would be quite
impossible to make out Wilberforce as the prelatical
apostle of ecclesiastical authority trying to down the
honest observations of simple science. In the speech he
may have been less cautious; but we can be sure he
made something of the same points. At the beginning of
The Athenaeum report we read `The Bishop of Oxford
stated that the Darwinian theory, when tried by the
principles of inductive science, broke down. The facts
brought forward, did not warrant the theory.'
Wilberforce's scientific criticisms are then reported,
and finally: `Mr Darwin's conclusions were an hypothesis,
raised most unphilosophically to the dignity of a causal
theory. He was glad to know that the greatest names in
science were opposed to this theory, which he believed to
be opposed to the interests of science and humanity.18
According to Jackson's
Oxford Journal he condemned the Darwinian theory as
`unphilosophical; as founded, not on philosophical
principles, but upon fancy, and he denied that one
instance had been produced by Mr Darwin on the alleged
change from one species to another had ever taken place
[sic]. He alluded to the weight of authority that had
been brought to bear against it - men of eminence, like
Sir B. Brodie and Professor Owen, being opposed to it,
and concluded, amid much cheering, by denouncing it as
degrading to man, and as a theory
founded upon fancy, instead of upon facts.'29
Wilberforce may not have told his audience in the Museum
that it was, in principle, possible that Darwin's theory
was true, in which case humanity would have to eat humble
pie, but it is clear that he did not argue that Darwin's
theory must be false because its implications for the
nature of man were unacceptable. As he saw it, and as
most of his audience saw it, he was showing that it was,
as a matter of scientific fact false, and only having
established this did he go on to say in effect `and a
good thing too'.
In assessing Wilberforce's argument, two crucial
distinctions have to be borne in mind: first between the
Darwinism that Darwin was propounding and what is
understood as Darwinism today; and secondly between
simple inductive generalization and an overall schema of
explanation and interpretation. Evolution is not itself
an immutable creed, but has itself evolved. The Neo-
Darwinism that men of science now accept took its present
form only in the 1940s and is at least three stages
removed from the theory Darwin propounded. Darwin had no
theory of genes and gave no account of how it was that
species came into being: the very title of his book was
itself a misnomer. What he was really arguing for was a
hypothesis that each species had gradually developed from
some simpler one, and the Survival of the Fittest as a
partial explanation of how this had happened.
Wilberforce claimed that the hypothesis was false and
that the explanation failed to account for some crucial
facts. In the review he devoted six pages30
to the absence in the geological record of any case of
one species developing into another. Darwin had felt
this to be a difficulty, and had explained it away by
reason of the extreme imperfection of the geological
record. Subsequent discoveries were soon to vindicate
Darwin, and to fill in the stages whereby many different
species had evolved from common ancestors: but in 1860 it
was fair to point out the gaps in the evidence, and to
argue that Darwin had put forward only a conjectural
hypothesis, not a well-established theory.
In the speech Wilberforce concentrated on the apparent
fixity of species. Even Grandmother remembered his
saying rock-pigeons were what rock-pigeons always had
been. The Athenaeum is fuller. Between the
sentences already quoted, its report runs:
The permanence of specific forms was a fact confirmed by
all observation. The remains of animals, plants, and man
found in those earliest records of the human race - the
Egyptian catacombs, all spoke of their identity with
existing forms, and of the irresistible tendency of
organized beings to assume an unalterable character. The
line between man and the lower animals was distinct:
there was no tendency on the part of the lower animals to
become the self-conscious intelligent being, man; or
in man to degenerate and lose the high characteristics
of his mind and intelligence. All experiments had failed
to show any tendency in one animal to assume the form of
the other. In the great case of the pigeons quoted by Mr
Darwin, he admitted that no sooner were these animals set
free than they returned to their primitive type.
Everywhere sterility attended hybridism, as was seen in
the closely-allied forms of the horse and the ass.
Wilberforce was making three points. First that over the
course of human history there was no evidence of any new
species developing; secondly that selective
pressures, while admittedly having an effect, did not
cause a change of species; and thirdly that
the
phenomenon of the sterility of hybrids told strongly in
favour of the fixity of species. As regards the first
point we now know that Wilberforce is wrong; but on
the other two points he was right. Dogs, horses31 and pigeons have been
selectively bred for thousands of generations, yet
different breeds not only remain mutually fertile, but
are liable to revert to type. Obvious changes in the
phenotype are less significant than Darwin claimed, and
species are genetically much more stable than he had
supposed. Even if the family resemblances between
different species were fully recognized, it still would
not follow that they had evolved from one another.
Although Mendeléeff was to discover in 1869 family
resemblances between different elements, it was as much
part of orthodox doctrine in chemistry in the late
nineteenth century that the transmutation of elements was
impossible as it became orthodox doctrine in biology the
transmutation of species had, indeed, although by very
gradual steps, taken place. Unless and until Darwinians
could produce an explanation of how organisms of one
species could eventually evolve into those of another,
which also accounted for hybrid infertility and reversion
to type, it was a fair criticism to say that Darwin had
not offered a causal theory but only, at best, a
hypothesis.32
Darwin himself thought Wilberforce's criticisms fair or
at least faceable. `I have just read the
"Quarterly" ' he wrote to Hooker in July, 1860.
`It is uncommonly clever; it picks out with skill all
the most conjectural parts, and brings forward well all
the difficulties. It quizzes me quite splendidly by
quoting the "Anti-Jacobin" against my
Grandfather ... '33. A
letter to Lyell on 11 August is significant:'... This
morning I recommenced work and am at dogs; ... By the
way, the Bishop makes a very telling case against me, by
accumulating several instances where I speak
doubtfully; but this is very unfair, as in such cases
as this of the dog, the evidence is and must be very
doubtful.' Darwin's first work, on recovering his health,
was in the areas picked out as weak spots of his theory
by
Wilberforce.34 At the same
time he is beginning to be
more critical of Wilberforce's criticisms, as being
unreasonably stringent in view of the inevitably doubtful
nature of the evidence. Huxley had made this point at
the outset.
Prof. Huxley defended Mr Darwin's theory from the charge
of its being merely an hypothesis. He said, it was an
explanation of phenomena in Natural History, as the
undulating theory was of the phenomena of light. No one
objected to that theory because an undulation of light
had never been arrested and measured. Darwin's theory
was an explanation of facts; and his book was full of
new facts, all bearing on his theory. Without asserting
that every part of the theory had been confirmed, he
maintained that it was the best explanation of the origin
of species which had yet been offered.35
It was, indeed, not a simple hypothesis about what had
actually happened, but a schema of explanation and
interpretation. Its immense appeal lay in its power of
organizing the phenomena of natural history in a coherent
and intelligible way. This was what had led Hooker to
adopt it,36 and
subsequently commended it, in
spite of admitted difficulties and deficiencies, to
almost all working biologists.
It was, in modern parlance, a paradigm shift. This
explains why each side fumbled in its attempts to invoke
principles of the philosophy of science to determine how
the argument should proceed, and why, in spite of appeals
from Hooker, Henslow and many other leading biologists,
that the question should be regarded dispassionately,
Darwinism became at once a creed, to be espoused or
eschewed with religious vehemence and enthusiasm. It was
not just a Baconian hypothesis that could be accepted or
rejected by a simple enumeration of instances
independently of what was thought about other matters.
Darwinism affected the whole of a biologist's thinking,
his way of classifying, his way of explaining, what he
thought he could take for granted, what he would regard
as problems needing further attention. We may take
Huxley's point that Darwin's theory was not merely an
hypothesis but an explanation - but not from Huxley, the
disciple and propounder of Hume.37 According to
Tuckwell, Huxley expressed the point thus: `I am asked if
I accept Mr Darwin's book as a complete causal
hypothesis. Belated on a roadless common on a dark
night, if a lantern were offered to me, should I refuse
it because it shed an imperfect light? I think not - I
think not.' Again, it is a fair point, that scientific
theories should not be assessed against some abstract
standard but should be weighed against the alternatives
actually available, but not one that Huxley was in a
position to make, Huxley who
invented the word `agnostic' and was for ever urging the
obligation of intellectual integrity not to go beyond
what could be conclusively proved by the evidence. Could
not Kingsley have turned Huxley's own argument against
him to urge on him that, in spite of the lack of absolute
certainty in the matter, Huxley ought nevertheless to
embrace Christianity as being the best lantern available
to guide us through the darkness in which we find
ourselves?
Paradigms are pervasive. Because they affect the whole
way of thinking, they cannot be assessed by reference to
only limited evidence and consideration. One of the
charges against Wilberforce was that he considered the
bearing of Darwin's theory on our understanding of man,
and in spite of the explicit caveats
I have quoted from his review, allowed his audience to be
swayed by considerations not strictly scientific. But
whereas such considerations are irrelevant to limited
scientific laws, such as Baconian hypotheses, they cannot
be ruled out a priori from
being relevant to very general theories or paradigms.
Just as evidence for Darwinism could be drawn from many
fields, so can evidence against it. In recent years
Jensen and Eysenk have been in hot water for their
allegedly racist views about the genetic aspects of human
intelligence. It is interesting to note that Wilberforce
in his review had foreseen the potentially racist
implications of Darwin's theories, and has a witty
passage about colour prejudice of ants, who always have
black ants as their slaves.38
To put the argument briefly in the form of a dilemma:
either Darwin's theory was a simple hypothesis, in which
case difficulties about hybrids and reversion to type
were fair and at the time well-nigh conclusive arguments
against it: or it was a grand interpretative schema, in
which case counterintuitive consequences about the nature
and dignity of man were relevant and cogent.
Paradigms are not only pervasive, but appeal to
authority. Whereas with a Baconian induction, any
industrious observer can, in principle, examine instances
and either corroborate or refute the hypothesis, a
paradigm depends for its acceptance on its being found
illuminating by those who are actually working in the
field. This is what underlies two of the mutually
incompatible charges laid against Wilberforce. It was
complained (unfairly - see note 18 above) that
Wilberforce did not have first-hand knowledge of
biological research, but had been `crammed' by Professor
Owen, who had been staying at Cuddesdon the night before,
and therefore was not in a position to venture an opinion
on the merits of Darwin's theory. On the other hand, it
was also complained that Wilberforce did not so much
argue as appeal to authority. In the legend, of course,
the appeal was to ecclesiastical authority: but clearly
it was to scientific authority in the actual event. Both
sides made the appeal, both
over-played their hands.39
Huxley had wanted throughout
to reserve the whole question to professional scientists
on the grounds that the interested laymen were
incompetent to form a proper judgement. Wilberforce
claimed that `the greatest names in science' agreed with
him,40
whereupon first Lubbock and then Hooker expressed their
disagreement. At the time this was held to be far more
important than anything Huxley said.41
But although there were significant exceptions, it must
be remembered that, as The Athenaeum correctly42
reports, 'The most eminent naturalists assembled at
Oxford' were on Wilberforce's side.
All in all, Wilberforce's speech was well suited to the
occasion. Although it did not find favour with the
Darwinians, it not only succeeded in communicating to a
large and fractious audience new and difficult ideas, but
put forward serious arguments and made a number of
telling points, which, according to Tuckwell and Hooker,
Huxley did not succeed in meeting effectively.43
Although he, like everybody else there, was confused on
some of the finer points of scientific methodology, and
although he exaggerated his case in some respects, and
has turned out wrong in others, it was a creditable
performance. And it was seen as such. He himself showed
no signs of discomfiture on the occasion.44
Even Grandmother admits that the majority of the audience
were with the bishop as the end of the debate45
and the same point emerges from the account given by Sir
M. Foster, and tacitly accepted by Huxley's biographer.46
Certainly he was given the palm by The
Athenaeum;47
four years later Disraeli, not a profound thinker himself
but an accurate barometer of the climate of current
opinion, thought it tactful to allude to the interchange
in Wilberforce's presence;48
Wilberforce himself still thought well enough of the
written version of his views to reprint it in
his Essays contributed to the Quarterly Review in
1874;
and when, in 1881, his son was writing his biography, it
was an incident he could recall with
credit.49
Nevertheless, this was not how it was seen by everyone.
Wilberforce said something - something about apes and
grandmothers - which led Huxley to say to Brodie
`The Lord hath delivered him into my hands' and which
gave rise to the legend of his having been completely
obliterated by Huxley. According to the legend itself,
he turned to Huxley and asked: `Is it on your
grandfather's or grandmother's side that you claim
descent from the apes?' whereupon Huxley retorted: `I
would rather be descended from an ape than a bishop.' It
is good repartee, of the sort likely to be treasured by
undergraduates, but it cannot have been what was actually
said. In the first place, it is badly attested. The
chief ear-witness who supports it, Grandmother of
Macmillan's Magazine,50
was writing almost forty years after the event: the main
contemporary report to this effect, Lyell's letter to
Bunbury on 4 July, was giving only a second-hand
account,51
and saying that he had heard several different versions
of the incident. More weight should be given to the
account of Henry Fawcett, who wrote in the December
number of Macmillan's Magazine, but
Wilberforce is reported in oratio very
obliqua, and, as
I shall argue, wrongly in respect of one crucial word.52
In the second place, it is too good, and does not account
for the initial unease in the Darwinian camp. Although
when Huxley wrote to Dyster on 9 September he believed he
was the most popular man in Oxford for full four and
twenty hours afterwards,53
he
was not so sure at Dr Daubeny's that evening, when,
according to Grandmother's account, he had the look of
one who feels the cost of victory, and said 'once in a
lifetime is enough, if not too much'.54 In a letter to Huxley's son, she
was more explicit.
I gathered from Mr Huxley's look when I spoke to him at
Dr Daubeny's that he was not quite satisfied to have been
forced to take so personal a tone - it a
little jarred on his fine taste. But it was the Bishop
who first struck the insolent note of personal attack.55
But if the bishop had been as offensive as she made out,
Huxley had nothing to regret, and could relax in the
knowledge of having administered a well justified rebuke,
and enjoy a well-earned victory. Yet three days later,
on hearing the words `South America' in a remark about
butterflies, he started, quite irrelevantly in that
context, to controvert something Wilberforce must have
said about horses reverting to type there,56
and maintained that it was only `an assumption that the
wild horses of the Pampas of America were identical in
form with the original wild horse'.57
Nor was Huxley the only one to be unsure whether his
riposte to Wilberforce had been either called for
or successful. Grandmother recalled
I never saw such a display of fierce party spirit, the
looks of bitter hatred which the audience bestowed - (I
mean the majority) on us who were on your father's side -
as we passed through the crowd we felt that we were
expected to say `how abominably the Bishop was treated'-
or to be considered outcasts and detestable.58
She attributed it to party spirit. But Hooker, who had
also controverted Wilberforce, incurred no ill will, and
reported to Darwin: `I have been congratulated and
thanked by the blackest coats and whitest stocks in
Oxford.'59
Sir Charles Lyell reported a division of opinion about
Huxley's performance, many blaming Huxley for his
irreverent freedom, but others,
including the vice-chancellor,
thinking that the bishop got no more than he
deserved.60
But if the legend were correct, there could have been no
question of blaming Huxley. If I ask you whether you are
descended from an ape, you are perfectly entitled to say
you would rather be descended from an ape than a man like
me. Huxley must have gone much further than the bishop
for there to have been room for the difference of opinion
reported by Lyell. A few of his friends suspected that
he harmed his own cause by this kind of controversy.61
Even Darwin was writing three weeks later to urge him to
do less `volunteer-soldiering' in order to concentrate on
original research, and may have been moved in part by
doubts as to the effectiveness of Huxley's polemics.62
And although Huxley's biography records it as a success,
its concluding judgement is significantly qualified.
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.63
The defence was startling; and only resulted in a
drawn battle. The riposte therefore cannot have
been called for, nor have been entirely successful, and
the legend, which awards all the blame to Wilberforce and
a devastating success to Huxley, cannot be correct.
Huxley himself was at pains to disclaim the words `l
would rather be descended from an ape than a bishop', and
when these were attributed to him in the second volume of
Wilberforce's Life, a correction was sent in and
appears among the Errata in the third volume.
It reads `If I had to choose between being descended from
an ape or from a man who would use his great powers of
rhetoric to crush an argument, I should prefer the
former.' A fuller account from Huxley is given in his
letter to Dyster on 9 September 1860. He wrote
Samuel thought it was a fine opportunity for chaffing a
savan [sic] - However he performed the operation
vulgarly and I determined to punish him - partly on that
account and partly because he talked pretentious
nonsense. So when I got up I spoke pretty much to the
effect - that I had listened with great attention to the
Lord Bishop's speech but had been unable to discover
either a new fact or a new argument in it - except indeed
the question raised as to my personal predilections in
the matter of ancestry - That it would not have occurred
to me to bring forward such a topic as that for
discussion myself, but that I was quite ready to met the
Right Revd. prelate even on that ground - If then, said
I, the question is put to me would I rather have a
miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed
by nature and possessed of great means of influence and
yet who employs those faculties and that influence for
the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave
scientific discussion - I unhesitatingly affirm my
preference for the ape. Whereupon there was
inextinguishable laughter among the people - and they
listened to the rest of my argument with the greatest
attention ... I believe I was the most popular man in
Oxford for full four and twenty hours afterwards.
`If then, said I, the question is put to me ... ;'
but was it? It seems fairly clear that it was not. The
decisive evidence is that of Canon Farrar, who wrote to
Huxley's son, carefully correcting Grandmother's and J.
R. Green's version of what the bishop actually said.
Farrar was no enemy of Huxley. His account, although
written long after the event, is well considered, and
deserves credence.
... His [Wilberforce's] words are quite misquoted by you
(which your father refuted). They did not appear vulgar,
nor insolent nor personal, but flippant.
He had been talking of the perpetuity of species in
birds: and then denying a fortiori
the derivation of the species Man from Ape, he
rhetorically invoked the help of feeling: and said
(I swear to the sense and the form of the
sentence, if not to the words) `If anyone were to be
willing to trace his descent through an ape as his
grandfather, would he be willing to trace his
descent similarly on the side of his grandmother.'
It was (you see) the arousing the antipathy about
degrading women to the Quadrumana. It was not to
the point, but it was the purpose. It did not sound
insolent, but unscientific and unworthy of the zoological
argument which he had been sustaining. It was a
(bathos).
Your father's reply, (Remember, he did not use the word
`prostituting his abilities', but (I believe)
`degrading'. But I will swear to the absence of the
former low word. (Also equivocal was not used). ),
showed that there was a vulgarity as well as a folly in
the Bishop's words; and the impression distinctly
was, that the Bishop's party as they left the room, felt
abashed; and recognised that the Bishop had forgotten
to behave like a gentleman. The victory of your father,
was not the ironical dexterity shown by him, but the fact
that he had got a victory in respect of manners
and good breeding. You must remember that the
whole audience was made up of gentlefolk, who were not
prepared to endorse anything vulgar. The speech which
really left its mark scientifically on the
meeting, was the short one of Hooker, wherein he
said `he considered
that Darwin's views were true in the field of Botany;
and that he must claim that students should
"provisionally accept them as a working
hypothesis in
the field of the Animal Kingdom"'. I am confident,
in the above statements, not only that I have given the
true impression, but I can corroborate my quotations of
the words used by the exact memory of the late Canon T.
S. Evans of Durham, who about twelve years ago, talked
over with me, the details of the meeting ....
The blank look of Sir B. Brodie to your father's
remark, corroborates my view that the insolence and
personality of Bishop Wilberforce's remark was not caught
by the meeting, until your father remarked it.
. . . . .
The spiteful narrative which you quote from J. R. Green
(the historical writer) is hardly worthy of him!
I should say that to fair minds, the intellectual
impression left by the discussion was that the Bishop had
stated some facts about the perpetuity of Species, but
that noone had really contributed any valuable point to
the opposite side except Hooker; but that your father
had scored a victory over Bishop Wilberforce in the
question of good manners.65
. . . . .
If this account is accepted, Wilberforce never turned
to Huxley and asked him about his, Huxley's, ancestry,
but rather spoke about his own, Wilberforce's, descent,
either in the first person singular or possibly in the
first person plural or third person impersonal. This
accords with the account given in his biography,66 and would fit with what he
had said in the review `and if Mr Darwin can with the
same correctness of
reasoning demonstrate to us our fungular descent, we
shall dismiss our pride, and avow, with the
characteristic humility of philosophy, our unsuspected
cousinship with the mushrooms', with mushrooms being
replaced by apes, in consequence of Huxley's dispute with
Owen two days earlier. Wilberforce did, however, ask
some question of Huxley, intended to reveal a reductio
ad absurdum of the claim that evolution had taken
place over many generations.67
Once we have established the fixity of species, as
Wilberforce thought he had, then the principle that the
progeny are of the same species as the parents becomes a
strict logical equivalence relation, and any putative
chain of descent from one species to another must have a
broken link somewhere. It is quite fair to put this in
the form of a challenge, and to ask Huxley where he would
have us locate the break, pointing out the absurdity of
supposing either our near ancestors non-human or our
remote ancestors human, the former horn of the dilemma
being the grandfather that Green and Vernon Harcourt
remembered, the latter the ancestors that Tuckwell
remembered and Lyell had heard about. Tuckwell
remembered him as `expressing the "disquietude"
he should feel were a "venerable ape" be shown
to him as his ancestress in the Zoo'. According to
Tuckwell he had plagiarized this from a mountebank sermon
by Burgon.68
Perhaps what Tuckwell thought him to have plagiarized was
the gender of his progenitor, the lapse of taste that had
offended Farrar. Certainly, there is no need to suppose
that the reference to the apes was due to Burgon. The
quadrumana had been the focus of dispute two days
earlier, and Huxley's views had been made both then and
much earlier. It would be entirely natural for
Wilberforce to raise the question in these terms, and ask
Huxley where he stood on it: and it would be entirely
natural for Huxley to take this as a personal attack on
himself - three months earlier, in the April issue of the
Westminster Review, he had accused the critics of
Darwin of making him out to be no better than an ape
himself,69
and since the bishop was now criticizing him for being a
Darwinian, he must be calling him an ape too.
Canon Farrar reckoned Wilberforce went wrong in
invoking the aid of feeling and in particular the feeling
his audience had about the special status of women. The
latter may have struck a false note to Canon Farrar's
ears, but some of those present - Green and Vernon
Harcourt, for example - missed the gender of the
grandparent, and to my twentieth-century unchivalrous
mind it seems a very minor point, and I find it difficult
to believe that hearing this could have led Huxley to
exclaim that the Lord had given over Wilberforce into his
hands. Rather,
it was that behind Wilberforce's ad feminam appeal
lay an implicit use of the genetic fallacy - the
assumption that the steps whereby a doctrine or
institution has developed determines its intellectual or
social validity. Wilberforce had said, according to
Green,70
that `he had been told that Professor Huxley had said
that he didn't see that it mattered much to a man whether
his grandfather was an ape or not...': Huxley had had
occasion, two days earlier at the conclusion of his
speech against Owen, to claim that the worth of a man
depended on what he is, and not who his ancestors
were; and thus was all set to put the question to
himself about his own predilections in human handsomeness
and his own preferences in choice of ancestry.71
The other points Wilberforce had made - the pigeons, the
horses in South America, the short-legged sheep of
America - could not be convincingly refuted, but here was
something on which Huxley felt entirely confident. He
would argue with complete conviction that the dignity of
man depended not on his descent but on his doings, and on
that issue win to his own complete satisfaction.
Huxley's view prevailed. It was partly that Darwinism
won. Many of the difficulties urged against evolution in
1860 by Owen and others, though not those actually put
forward by Wilberforce in his speech, were satisfactorily
settled in the next few years. The geological record
filled in many missing links. Satisfactory explanations
of how electric eels or venomous snakes could have
evolved were found. It became a good inductive
hypothesis, as Wilberforce had all along allowed that it
might. The Darwinians, who were a small minority in
1860, became the dominant majority over the next twenty
years, but never lost the sense of being persecuted.
This was partly a matter of Huxley's own personality. He
had no love of ecclesiastics and was sure that science
must be at odds with religion. Later in his life he is
still remarkably resistant to the idea that there were
clergymen who accepted evolution, even when actually
faced with them.72
The fact that there were others who did not, including
some like the archdeacon of Exeter at a later meeting of
the British Association,73
fortified him in his prejudice that they were all
obscurantist at heart. The quarrel between religion and
science came about not because of what Wilberforce said,
but because it was what Huxley wanted; and as
Darwin's theory gained supporters, they took over his
view of the incident.
Huxley's arguments and antipathies were congenial to
many of his contemporaries. The irrelevance of descent
to moral worth struck chords in the mid-Victorian middle-
class, still anxiously asserting its political and
social standing in the face of the aristocracy at a time
when the Second Reform Bill was yet unpassed. Huxley
bearded a bishop, and bishops incurred the same
unthinking hostility then as vice-chancellors do now.
Wilberforce, in particular, was unpopular in the
university, and many dons were predisposed to think ill
of him, and cast his assailant in a heroic mould.74
Huxley's description was particularly significant.
Although many of the complaints against Wilberforce are
unsubstantiated and inconsistent with one another, two
things are indubitable: he was eloquent, and he was
funny. Hooker complained about the eloquence, Huxley
about the humour. And from that time forward scientists
have obediently practised a form of expression in their
communications with the learned world that could never
lay them open to either charge. It was a change of
style. The British Association had been founded with a
largely amateur and unprofessional public in mind.
Science, in the first half of the nineteenth century as
in previous centuries, was part of the intellectual
culture of mankind, into which all might enter and from
which all might profit. But from 1860 onwards it becomes
more of a closed shop, with its own puritan ethic, from
which amateurs are more and more excluded. Wilberforce
was `a man of restless and versatile intellect, who not
content with an [un]equivocal success in his own sphere
of activity, plunged into scientific questions with which
he had no real acquaintance',75
and this was no longer to be tolerated, just as in our
own century Literary Criticism has become a speciality in
which non-professionals are disfranchised from the right
to express an opinion. The men of science who attended
the British Association in 1860 and were hearing a paper
from Professor Draper, M.D., of New York `On the
Intellectual Development of Europe' were to give way to
the academics we know, for many of whom it is a point of
professional pride to know nothing outside their own
special subject.
This is the most important reason why the legend grew.
At the time, Wilberforce was perfectly entitled to have
an opinion about science, but in the later years of the
century scientists were increasingly jealous of their
autonomy, and would see in Huxley's retort a claim they
were increasingly anxious to assert. They identified
with Huxley, and since they were successful, he must have
succeeded on that occasion too---Tuckwell's account of the
incident comes in his chapter on the rise of `Scientific
Science'. In itself entirely unimportant, one of the
many skirmishes which took place in Oxford during the
field days organized by the British Association, the
incident grew to be the one thing that most people now
have heard about either Wilberforce or Huxley. About
what actually happened in Oxford on 30 June 1860 it tells
us very little: but about currents of thought in the
latter part of the last century it tells us a lot.
*. [Added in proof.] Broadcast 12
and I5 Dec. I978.
1. David Edwards, Leaders of the
Church of England, (0xford, 1971), pp. I03-4. Stanley
L.Jaki, `A hundred years of two cultures', Culture and
Science (University of Windsor, 1975),p.3. Standish
Meacham, Lord Bishop:the life of Samuel
Wilberforce (Harvard, 1970), pp. 2I2-I7.
2. Owen Chadwick, The Victorian
Church (2 vols., London, 1970, vol. 2, pp. 10-12.
3. By Mrs Isabella Sidgwick,
Macmillan's Magazine, LXXVIII, no. 468, Oct. 1898,
`A Grandmother's tales', 433-4. I owe the identification
to Mr Christopher Chessun, of University College, Oxford.
4. Francis Darwin, Life and
letters of Charles Darwin (3 vols., London, 1888),
II, 320-3, hereafter cited as Darwin.
5. Leonard HuxIey, Life and
letters of Thomas Henry Hvxley (2 vols., London,
1900), I, 179-89, hereafter cited as Huxley.
6. Huxley, I, 179.
7. Huxley, 1, 180.
8. W. H. Fremantle, Charles
Darwin, his life told &c;. (1892), p. 238; quoted
in Darwin, II, 320-1. William Tuckwell, Reminiscences
of Oxford (London, 1900), pp. 50-3; hereafter
cited as Tuckwell. Leonard Huxley, Life and
letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, (London, 1918),
I, 522-5; hereafter cited as Hooker. R.G.
Wilberforce, Life of Bishop Wilberforce (London,
1881), II, 450-I, 1882, III, Errata; hereafter
cited as Wilberforce.
9. Hooker to Darwin on 2 July;
reprinted in Hooker, I, 525-7. J. R. Green to W.
Boyd Dawkins on 3 July; reprinted in L. Stephen
(ed.), Letters of J.R.Green (London, 1901), pp.
42-5. Sir Charles Lyell to Sir Charles Bunbury on 4
July; reprinted Mrs Lyell, Life of Sir Charles
Lyell (London, 1881), II, 335; hereafter cited as
Lyell. Huxley to Dyster on 9 Sept. 1860, Huxley papers,
Imperial College, London, 117ff.; partly reprinted in
Cyril Bibby, Scientist extraordinary, T. H. Huxley
(Oxford, 1972), p. 41. George Allman to Huxley 9 July
1860, Huxley papers, 79. George Rolleston to Huxley, ?
Dec. 1860, Huxley papers, 151ff. I am much indebted to
Professor Owen Chadwick for making copies of these
letters available to me.
10. The Athenaeum, nos. 1705,
1706 and 1707, 30 June, 7 July and 14 July 1860.
Jackson's Oxford Journal, Saturday 7 July, 1860,
p.2, col. 6.
11. On Thursday, 28 June; see
The Athenaeum, p.26, col.i.
12. Hooker, I, 525-7.
13. Lyell, II, 335; quoted in
n. 41 below. See also The Rev. A.S.Farrar to Leonard
Huxley, 12 July 1899, Huxley papers, 16; quoted below
p. 327.
14. The Athenaeum, p.19,
col.i.
15. Ibid., p.26, col.i.
16. Especially Huxley, I,
179, quoted above, pp. 313 f., and I, 189, quoted below
pp. 325 f.
17. Tuckwell, p. 51:
`Another pause, an appeal from the chairman to Huxley,
his sarcastic response that he certainly held a brief for
Science, but had not yet heard it assailed.'
18. The Reverend A.S.Farrar to
Leonard Huxley, 12 July 1899, Huxley papers, Imperial
College, London, 14; cf. J.W.Burgon, Lives of
twelve good men (London, 1891), p.277 for
Wilberforce's interest in geology as well as ornithology.
19. The Athenaeum, p.26,
cols.i-ii.
20. Ibid. p.65, col.iii.
21. Ibid. p.28, col.i.
22. Wilberforce, II, 450.
23. The Quarterly Review,
cviii, July i 860, 225-64; reprinted in Samuel
Wilberforce, Essays contributed to the Quarterly
Review (London, 1874), 1, 52-I03, and in part in R.
Brimley Johnson (ed.), Famous reviews (London,
1914), pp. 267-87.
24. Hooker, I, 526;
Tuckwell, p.51; but note that Henry Fawcett,
Macmillan's Magazine, iii, no. 14 (Dec. 1860), p.
88, quoted in n.52 below, complained that no mention of
the geological evidence was made. Much must have been
left out.
25. The Quarterly Review,
pp. 225-56; Wilberforce, Essays, I, 52-92;
Brimley Johnson, Famous reviews, pp. 267-79.
26. The Quarterly Review,
p. 231; Wilberforce, Essays, I, 58-9;
Brimley Johnson, Famous Reviews, p. 270.
27. The Quarterly Review,
p. 256; Wilberforce, Essays, I, p.92;
Brimley Johnson, Famous Reviews, p.279.
28. The Athenaeum, p. 65,
col. i.
29. Jackson's Oxford
Journal, Saturday 7 July, 1860, p. 2, col. 6.
30. The Quarterly Review,
pp.239-45; Wilberforce, Essays, I,70-7;
Brimley Johnson, Famous reviews, p. 271 But see
n.24 above.
31. See below, PP. 325 f.
32. 1 am indebted to Sir Alister
Hardy for many valuable discussions on the true nature of
speciation. See his The living stream (London,
1965), pp. 96-7.
33. Darwin, II, 324-5.
34. Darwin,II,356; it
was published in 1868 under the title The variation of
animals and plants under domestication and contains
besides a chapter on dogs, two chapters on pigeons.
35. The Athenaeum, p.65,
col.i. Cf. Huxley, I, 193, and Henry Fawcett,
Macmillan's Magazine, III, no.14 (Dec. 1860), pp.
83-4.
36. The Athenaeum, p.65,
col.ii.
37. T.H.Huxley, Hume
(London, 1879).
38. The Quarterly Review,
pp. 253-4; Wilberforce, Essays, i, p. 89;
Brimley Johnson, Famous reviews, p.278.
39. Henry Fawcett, Macmillan's
Magazine, III, no.14 (Dec. 1860), p.81, corrected by
J.S.Henslow, III, no. 16 (Feb. 1861), p.336.
40. The Athenaeum says `the
greatest names in science', but reports Hooker as saying
`that the Bishop of Oxford having asserted that all men
of science were hostile to Mr Darwin's hypothesis -
whereas he himself was favourable to it - he could not
presume to address the audience as a scientific
authority'. It is unlikely that the reporter would have
introduced the discrepancy - compare Jackson's Oxford
Journal (quoted pages 318-19 above). It is more
likely that Hooker misheard - one of the earliest steps
in the making of the myth - or - quite pardonably in that
context - misrepresented Wilberforce in order to
introduce his own remarks with a pleasing mock modesty.
41. Lyell to Sir Charles Bunbury
on Wednesday, 4 July [Lyell, p. 335]: `I was not
able to attend the section of Zoology and Botany (Henslow
in the chair), when first Owen and Huxley, and on a later
day the Bishop of Oxford and Huxley, had a spar, and on
the latter occasion young Lubbock and Joseph Hooker
declared their adhesion to Darwin's theory.'
42. See G.S.Carter, A hundred
years of evolution (London, 1957), p. 70.
43. Tuckwell, p. 52;
Hooker, I, 526.
44. Tuckwell, p. 52;
nor did he later show any hostility to Huxley; see
Huxley, I, 188.
45. Letter to Leonard Huxley,
quoted Huxley, I, 188-9.
46. Reported in Huxley, I,
189.
47. P.19, col.i.
48. W.F.Monypenny and G.E.Buckley,
Life of Disraeli (London, 1910), IV, 374.
49. Wilberforce, II, 450-1.
50. Quoted above, pp. 313f.
51. Lyell, II, 335. Green
(L.Stephen, Letters of J.R.Green, pp.44 f.) was a
contemporary ear-witness, but his reliability is impugned
by Farrar. See his letter to Huxley quoted pages 326-8
below.
52. Macmillan's Magazine,
III, 88. Since I shall, in effect, be disbelieving
Fawcett's testimony, it is only fair to quote him in
full. `We were therefore not a little astonished, that
in the discussions upon Mr Darwin at the British
Association at Oxford geology was not even alluded to.
It was sad, indeed, to think that the opponents of the
theory sought to supply this omission by summoning to
their aid a species of oratory which could deem it an
argument to ask a professor if he should object to
discover that he had been developed out of an ape. The
professor aptly replied to his assailant by remarking,
that man's remote descent from an ape was not so
degrading to his dignity as the employment of oratorical
powers to misguide the multitude by throwing ridicule
upon a scientific discussion. The retort was so justly
deserved, and so inimitable in its manner, that no one
who was present can ever forget the impression it made.'
53. Huxley papers, 117ff.;
quoted below, p. 326; also in Cyril Bibby,
Scientist extraordinary, p. 41.
54. Quoted above, p. 314.
55. Huxley, I, 188.
56. Cf. his review in The
Quarterly, pp. 325-6; Wilberforce, Essays,
I, 64-5.
57. The Athenaeum, no.
1707, 14 July 1860, p.65, col.iii.
58. Huxley, I, 189.
59. Hooker, I, 527.
60. Lyell, II, 335.
61. Owen Chadwick, The
Victorian Church, I, 11; see, for example,
Rolleston to Huxley, Huxley papers, 151ff.
62. Francis Darwin and A.C.Seward,
More letters of Charles Darwin (London, 1903), I,
I 57-8.
63. Huxley, I, 189.
65. Farrar to Leonard Huxley, 12
July 1899, Huxley papers, 13ff.; quoted in part
Huxley, I, 182-3 n.
66. Wilberforce, II, 451.
`In the course of this speech which made a great
impression, the bishop said that whatever certain people
might believe, he would not look at the monkeys in
the zoo as connected with his ancestors.' (My
italics.)
67. Vernon Harcourt to Leonard
Huxley, quoted Huxley, I, 185. According to
The Athenaeum (p. 65, col.i), Huxley met the
challenge by pointing out that each individual had been
`once a monad'.
68. Tuckwell, pp. 51-52.
69. Westminster Review
[vol. LXXlII, no. CXLIV] - New Series, vol.XVII, no.II,
p.541; quoted in Cyril Bibby, Scientist
extraordinary, pp.39-40.
70. L. Stephen, Letters of
J.R.Green, pp. 44f.
71. The Athenaeum (p.19,
col.i), although not conclusive, supports this view.
`But others - conspicuous among them Professor Huxley -
have expressed their willingness to accept, for
themselves as well as for their friends and enemies, all
actual truths, even the last humiliating truth of a
pedigree not registered in the Herald's College.'
72. Huxley, I, 302 n.;
see also T. H. Huxley, Collected essays (London,
1893), III, 119.
73. Owen Chadwick, History of
the Victorian Church, II, 25, 27.
74. Cf. J.R.Searle, The campus war
(Pelican, 1972), p. 99, for modern, secular analogues.
75. L.Stephen, Letters of
J.R.Green, p. 45.
[Originally published in
The Historical Journal, 22, 2 (1979), pp. 313-330
A separate, slightly different account is given by
Sheridan Gilley, ``The Huxley-Wilberforce Debate: a Reconsideration'',
Studies in Church History, 17, pp.325-340.
Another account, citing some different evidence, is given by Allan Chapman, ``Monkeying about with History: Remembering the `Great Debarte' of 1860?''
Oxfrod Magazine, No.299, Noughth Week, Trinity Term, 2010, pp.10-12.
For a fuller account of Huxley's part in the confrontation between science and religion in the nineteenth century,
see Sheridan Gilley and Ann Loades,
``Thomas Henry Huxley: the War between Science and Religion'',
The Journal of Religion,
61, 3, (July 1981), pp.285-348.]
Further criticisms and amendments are to be found in:
J.V. Jensen, ``Return to the Huxley--Wilberforec Debate'',
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science,
21, 1988, pp.161-179.
See also Janet Browne, Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, 8, 1978, pp.351-366;
and James Moore, The Post-Darwinian Controversies, Cambridge, 1979, pp.217-251.
Click here to go to ``Historian Malgré Moi'',
an account of how I came to write this piece.
On November 6th, 2003, I stood up for Bishop Wilberforce at the British Academy, saying what he might have said now, with the benefit of 140 years hindsight,
to a neo-Huxley (represented by Professor Janet Browne).
Click here for a semi-transcript of Professor Browne's and my contributions.
Click here for a summary of the case for Bishop Wilberforce
Click here to return to home page
Click here to return to bibliography
Click here for a Polish translation
Click here for a link to Polish translation