WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 182, 4 May 1925, Page 8

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By T.D.H.) A tax on silks is denounced in Britain as hitting the poor.—Duty-free champagne will next be the watchword of the proletariat. A hundred years ago to-day there was born in what was then a little village out of London, that very remarkable man, Thomas Leonard Huxley. It was as the champion of the Darwinian ideas as to nlen being descended from -monkeys that Professor Huxley gained his widest fame in a life of extraordinary achievement. _ It is difficult now to conjure up a vision of the spasm of horror that ran through the marrowbones of the pious when scientific men first propounded the blasphemous theory of evolution. Feeling, ran 'so high that evolutionists had almost to face social ostracism, but Huxley was not a whit disturbed before a storm from which many other scientific men shrank, the number including Sir Richard I Owen, whom New Zealand remembers for his feat in writing an accurate description of the moa with no more than a bit of one bone to go on. Owen poohpoohed applying the evolutionary idea to man, and’ Huxley smashed him to a, jelly Huxley was the son of a schoolmaster and was born at Ealing. His grandfather appears to have been h publican, and of Ins ancestry he said: “Alv own genealogical inquiries have taken me so far back that I confess the later stages do not interest me.” He wished to become an engineer, having an intense interest in mechanics, but two of his sisters had married doctors, and he became an apprentice to one of them. After a brilliant career as a student, Huxley became an assistant surgeon in the Navy, and was sent out in H.AI.S. Rattlesnake, which was making an exploring expedition in Australian and New Guinea waters. Thus, like Darwin and Hooker, with whom he was later closely associated, he began his scientific careet at sea. Huxley made such good use of his four year# in the Rattlesnake that his scientific investigations brought him into the front rank on his return. The medical profession was not so well up in the world as it is to-day, for the assistant surgeon messed with'the midshipmen, and thus was in the unenviable position of being a grown man quartered with a pack of bovs. Nevertheless, wrote Huxley, “it wa's good for me to live under sharp discipline." Huxley was one of the three people whose opinion Darwin sought before publishing “The Origin of Species” in 1859, and when that hair-raising volume appeared Huxley from the outset consti- - tuted himself its champion, “Aly general agent,” Darwin called him, and "Darwin’s bull-dog” was his own description of himself. By great good fortune it fell to him to write the review which was published in the Londin “Tinies.” The “Times” sent the "Origin” to one of its reviewers, a Air. Lucas, an excellent journalist, but as innocent as a babe of any knowledge .of science! To a friend he bewailed his fate at having to review such a book, and this friend suggested that he should ask Huxley to do it. Huxley, on being applied to, jumped at the chance to cause “the educated mob, who derive their ideas from the‘Times’ " to reflect. “Whatever they he said, “they, respect Darwin.”

As for the way large sections of the public took to the idea of evolution the comment of a leading journal ot the period on one of Huxley’s; addresses gives a fair idea. After deploring that the audience applauded this “antiScriptural and most debasing theory . . standing in. blasphemous contradiction to Biblical narrative and doctrine," the journal referred to the address as “this foul outrage committed upon them individually,' and upon the whole , species as ‘made in-the image of God’” and evolution itself as “the vilest and. beastliest paradox ever vented in ancient or modern times amongst Pagans or Christians. The ‘most famous episode following the publication of the “Origin” was the encounter between Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce at the Oxford meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1860. .It was then that Huxley first made himself known in popular estimation as a dangerous adversary in debate, and incidentally saved the whole Darwinian theory from being stifled under misrepresentation and ridicule. .It had been, given out that Bishop Wilberforce intended to “smash Darwin.” Huxley had not intended to be present, as he had felt that there was going to be no scientific discussion, but was begged bv a supporter of Darwin “not to desert them.” The occasion was , a paper by Dr. Draper, of New York, on “The Intellectual Development of Europe considered with reference to the views of Air. Darwin.” In the discussion on the paper Bishop Wilberforce, who had been loaded up with scientific data bv Sir Richard Owen, ridiculed Darwin badly and Huxley savagely, but all in dulcet tones and well-turned periods. “In a light scoffing tone, florid and fluent,” said a writer in “Alacmillau’s Alagazine, ’ ‘ 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 smiling insolence, he begged to know, was it through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey?” “On this" (continues the writer from “Macmillan’s Alagazine”), “Mr. Huxley slowlv and deliberately arose. A slight tall figure, stern and pale, 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 our breath, though it left us in no doubt as to what it was. He was not ashamed to have a monkev for his ancestor; but he would be ashamed to be connectci 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 be earned ' out; I,'for one, jumped out of my seat.’* According to Air. A. G. Y ernou-Har-court, the actual words of Professor Huxlev were as nearly as possible as follows: “But if this question is treated, not as a> matter for the calm investigation of science, but as a lnatter of sentiment, and if I am asked whether I would choose to be descended fiom the poor animal of low intelligence, and stooping gait, who grins and chatters as we pass, or. from a man, endowed with great ability and a splendid position, who should use these gifts to discredit and crush humble seekers after truth, I hesitate what answer to make.” The following, forwarded by a correspondent, may not be exactly new, but ’twill pass:—Johnny was asked by his Sundav school, teacher to define a he. His definition was: “A he. Miss, is an abomination in the sight of the Lord, but a very present help in tune of trouble.” How many voices gaily sing,. “O happv morn, O happv* spring Of life !" Aleanwhile there, comes oer me A softer voice from memory, And says, “If loves and hopes have flown With vears. think, too, what griefs are gouel g ava g e Landor.