'' (1863) compares ape and human skeletons. The
gibbon (left) is double size. Huxley was originally not persuaded by "development theory", as evolution was once called. This can be seen in his savage review of
Robert Chambers'
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, an 1844 book which contained some quite pertinent arguments in favour of evolution. Huxley had also rejected
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's theory of transmutation, on the basis that there was insufficient evidence to support it. All this scepticism was brought together in a lecture to the Royal Institution, which made Darwin anxious enough to set about an effort to change young Huxley's mind. It was the kind of thing Darwin did with his closest scientific friends, but he must have had some particular intuition about Huxley, who was by all accounts a most impressive person even as a young man. Huxley was therefore one of the small group who knew about Darwin's ideas before they were published (the group included
Joseph Dalton Hooker and
Charles Lyell). The first publication by Darwin of his ideas came when Wallace sent Darwin his famous paper on natural selection, which was presented by Lyell and Hooker to the
Linnean Society in 1858 alongside excerpts from Darwin's notebook and a Darwin letter to
Asa Gray. Huxley's famous response to the idea of natural selection was "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!" However, he never conclusively made up his mind about whether natural selection was the main method for evolution, though he did admit it was a hypothesis which was a good working basis. Logically speaking, the prior question was whether evolution had taken place at all. It is to this question that much of Darwin's
On the Origin of Species was devoted. Its publication in 1859 completely convinced Huxley of evolution and it was this and no doubt his admiration of Darwin's way of amassing and using evidence that formed the basis of his support for Darwin in the debates that followed the book's publication. Huxley's support started with his anonymous favourable review of the
Origin in the
Times for 26 December 1859, and continued with articles in several periodicals, and in a lecture at the
Royal Institution in February 1860. At the same time,
Richard Owen, whilst writing an extremely hostile anonymous review of the
Origin in the
Edinburgh Review, also primed
Samuel Wilberforce who wrote one in the
Quarterly Review, running to 17,000 words. The authorship of this latter review was not known for sure until Wilberforce's son wrote his biography. So it can be said that, just as Darwin groomed Huxley, so Owen groomed Wilberforce; and both the proxies fought public battles on behalf of their principals as much as themselves. Though we do not know the exact words of the Oxford debate, we do know what Huxley thought of the review in the
Quarterly: in
Vanity Fair, 1871 Since
Lord Brougham assailed Dr
Young, the world has seen no such specimen of the insolence of a shallow pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science." If I confine my retrospect of the reception of the
Origin of Species to a twelvemonth, or thereabouts, from the time of its publication, I do not recollect anything quite so foolish and unmannerly as the
Quarterly Review article... Since his death, Huxley has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog", taken to refer to his pluck and courage in debate, and to his perceived role in protecting the older man. The sobriquet appears to be Huxley's own invention, although of unknown date, and it was not current in his lifetime. While the second half of Darwin's life was lived mainly within his family, the younger and combative Huxley operated mainly out in the world at large. A letter from Huxley to
Ernst Haeckel (2 November 1871) states: "The dogs have been snapping at [Darwin's] heels too much of late."
Debate with Wilberforce Famously, Huxley responded to Wilberforce in the debate at the
British Association meeting, on Saturday 30 June 1860 at the Oxford University Museum. Huxley's presence there had been encouraged on the previous evening when he met Robert Chambers, the Scottish publisher and author of
Vestiges, who was walking the streets of Oxford in a dispirited state, and begged for assistance. The debate followed the presentation of a paper by
John William Draper, and was chaired by Darwin's former botany tutor
John Stevens Henslow. Darwin's theory was opposed by the Bishop of Oxford,
Samuel Wilberforce, and those supporting Darwin included Huxley and their mutual friends Hooker and
John Lubbock. The platform featured
Sir Benjamin Brodie and Professor Beale, and
Robert FitzRoy, who had been captain of HMS
Beagle during Darwin's voyage, spoke against Darwin. Wilberforce had a track record against evolution as far back as the previous Oxford B.A. meeting in 1847 when he attacked Chambers'
Vestiges. For the more challenging task of opposing the
Origin, and the implication that man descended from apes, he had been assiduously coached by
Richard OwenOwen stayed with him the night before the debate. On the day, Wilberforce repeated some of the arguments from his
Quarterly Review article (written but not yet published), then ventured onto slippery ground. His famous jibe at Huxley (as to whether Huxley was descended from an ape on his mother's side or his father's side) was probably unplanned, and certainly unwise. Huxley's reply to the effect that he would rather be descended from an ape than a man who misused his great talents to suppress debatethe exact wording is not certainwas widely recounted in pamphlets and a spoof play. The letters of
Alfred Newton include one to his brother giving an eyewitness account of the debate, and written less than a month afterwards. Other eyewitnesses, with one or two exceptions (Hooker especially thought
he had made the best points), give similar accounts, at varying dates after the event. The general view was and still is that Huxley got much the better of the exchange, though Wilberforce himself thought he had done quite well. In the absence of a verbatim report, differing perceptions are difficult to judge fairly; Huxley wrote a detailed account for Darwin, a letter which does not survive; however, a letter to his friend Frederick Daniel Dyster does survive with an account just three months after the event. One effect of the debate was to hugely increase Huxley's visibility amongst educated people, through the accounts in newspapers and periodicals. Another consequence was to alert him to the importance of public debate: a lesson he never forgot. A third effect was to serve notice that Darwinian ideas could not be easily dismissed: on the contrary, they would be vigorously defended against orthodox authority. A fourth effect was to promote professionalism in science, with its implied need for scientific education. A fifth consequence was indirect: as Wilberforce had feared, a defence of evolution did undermine literal belief in the
Old Testament, especially the
Book of Genesis. Many of the liberal clergy at the meeting were quite pleased with the outcome of the debate; they were supporters, perhaps, of the controversial
Essays and Reviews. Thus, both on the side of science and on that of religion, the debate was important and its outcome significant. (see also
below) Huxley and Wilberforce remained on courteous terms after the debate (and able to work together on projects such as the Metropolitan Board of Education), whereas Huxley and Owen were never reconciled.
Man's place in nature For nearly a decade his work was directed mainly to the relationship of man to the apes. This led him directly into a clash with
Richard Owen, a man widely disliked for his behaviour whilst also being admired for his capability. The struggle was to culminate in some severe defeats for Owen. Huxley's
Croonian Lecture, delivered before the Royal Society in 1858 on
The Theory of the Vertebrate Skull was the start. In this, he rejected Owen's theory that the bones of the skull and the spine were
homologous, an opinion previously held by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and
Lorenz Oken. From 1860 to 1863 Huxley developed his ideas, presenting them in lectures to working men, students and the general public, followed by publication. Also in 1862 a series of talks to working men was printed lecture by lecture as pamphlets, later bound up as a little green book; the first copies went on sale in December. Other lectures grew into Huxley's most famous work ''Evidence as to Man's place in Nature
(1863) where he addressed the key issues long before Charles Darwin published his Descent of Man'' in 1871. Although Darwin did not publish his
Descent of Man until 1871, the general debate on this topic had started years before (there was even a precursor debate in the 18th century between
James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, and
Georges-Louis Leclerc). Darwin had dropped a hint when, in the conclusion to the
Origin, he wrote: "In the distant future... light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history". Not so distant, as it turned out. A key event had already occurred in 1857 when
Richard Owen presented (to the Linnean Society) his theory that man was marked off from all other mammals by possessing features of the brain peculiar to the genus
Homo. Having reached this opinion, Owen separated man from all other mammals in a subclass of its own. No other biologist held such an extreme view. Darwin reacted "Man...as distinct from a chimpanzee [as] an ape from a platypus... I cannot swallow that!" Neither could Huxley, who was able to demonstrate that Owen's idea was completely wrong. The subject was raised at the 1860 BA Oxford meeting, when Huxley flatly contradicted Owen, and promised a later demonstration of the facts. In fact, a number of demonstrations were held in London and the provinces. In 1862 at the Cambridge meeting of the B.A. Huxley's friend
William Flower gave a public dissection to show that the same structures (the posterior horn of the lateral ventricle and hippocampus minor) were indeed present in apes. The debate was widely publicised, and parodied as the
Great Hippocampus Question. It was seen as one of Owen's greatest blunders, revealing Huxley as not only dangerous in debate but also a better anatomist. Owen conceded that there was something that could be called a hippocampus minor in the apes, but stated that it was much less developed and that such a presence did not detract from the overall distinction of simple brain size. Huxley's ideas on this topic were summed up in January 1861 in the first issue (new series) of his own journal, the
Natural History Review: "the most violent scientific paper he had ever composed". In his
Collected Essays this addendum was removed. The extended argument on the ape brain, partly in debate and partly in print, backed by dissections and demonstrations, was a landmark in Huxley's career. It was highly important in asserting his dominance of comparative anatomy, and in the long run more influential in establishing evolution amongst biologists than was the debate with Wilberforce. It also marked the start of Owen's decline in the esteem of his fellow biologists. The following was written by Huxley to
George Rolleston before the BA meeting in 1861: :"My dear Rolleston... The obstinate reiteration of erroneous assertions can only be nullified by as persistent an appeal to facts; and I greatly regret that my engagements do not permit me to be present at the British Association in order to assist personally at what, I believe, will be
the seventh public demonstration during the past twelve months of the untruth of the three assertions, that the posterior lobe of the cerebrum, the posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle, and the hippocampus minor, are peculiar to man and do not exist in the apes. I shall be obliged if you will read this letter to the Section" Yours faithfully, Thos. H. Huxley. During those years there was also work on human fossil anatomy and anthropology. In 1862 he examined the
Neanderthal skull-cap, which had been discovered in 1857. It was the first pre-
sapiens discovery of a fossil man, and it was immediately clear to him that the brain case was surprisingly large. Huxley also started to dabble in
physical anthropology, and classified the human
races into nine categories, along with placing them under four general categorisations as Australoid, Negroid, Xanthochroic and Mongoloid. Such classifications depended mainly on physical appearance and certain anatomical characteristics.
Natural selection Huxley was certainly not slavish in his dealings with Darwin. As shown in every biography, they had quite different and rather complementary characters. Important also, Darwin was a field naturalist, but Huxley was an anatomist, so there was a difference in their experience of nature. Lastly, Darwin's views on science were different from Huxley's views. For Darwin, natural selection was the best way to explain evolution because it explained a huge range of natural history facts and observations: it solved problems. Huxley, on the other hand, was an empiricist who trusted what he could see, and some things were not easily seen. With this in mind, one can appreciate the debate between them, Darwin writing his letters, Huxley never going quite so far as to say he thought Darwin was right. Huxley's reservations on natural selection were of the type "until selection and breeding can be seen to give rise to varieties which are infertile with each other, natural selection cannot be proved". Huxley's position on selection was agnostic; yet he gave no credence to any other theory. Despite this concern about evidence, Huxley saw that if evolution came about through variation, reproduction and selection then other things would also be subject to the same pressures. This included ideas because they are invented, imitated and selected by humans: ‘The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.’ This is the same idea as
meme theory put forward by
Richard Dawkins in 1976. Darwin's part in the discussion came mostly in letters, as was his wont, along the lines: "The
empirical evidence you call for is both impossible in practical terms, and in any event unnecessary. It's the same as asking to see every step in the transformation (or the splitting) of one species into another. My way so many issues are clarified and problems solved; no other theory does nearly so well". Huxley's reservation, as Helena Cronin has so aptly remarked, was contagious: "it spread itself for years among all kinds of doubters of Darwinism". One reason for this doubt was that comparative anatomy could address the question of descent,
but not the question of mechanism.
Pallbearer Huxley was a pallbearer at the funeral of
Charles Darwin on 26 April 1882. ==The X Club==