Note 46 — Chapter XIV

It is now known that it was through the influence of Robert Chambers that T. H. Huxley was present and made his famous reply to Bishop Wilberforce at Oxford in 1860. Huxley was in Oxford, but intended to have left that morning because he believed that the discussion would take a theological, or other than a scientific turn, and would be unprofitable, but "on the Friday afternoon he chanced to meet Robert Chambers, the reputed author of the Vestiges of Creation, who begged him not to desert them, accordingly he postponed his departure" (Life and Letters of Thomas H. Huxley, by his Son, I, 193). In this discussion Bishop Wilberforce, in closing a half-hour's clever, but unfair speech, turned to Huxley and asked him whether it was on the side of Huxley's grandfather or grandmother that he claimed his own descent from a monkey? Huxley endured the laughter and applause which followed this personal sally with something more than good nature. He turned to Sir Benjamin Brodie, who sat beside him, and slapping his knee, exclaimed: "The Lord hath delivered him into my hands!" It was even so. Huxley rose to reply, and said that he would not be ashamed of having a monkey as an ancestor, but he would be ashamed of any relationship to a gifted man, who, not content with success in his own sphere of activity, plunged into a discussion of matters of which he had no real acquaintance "only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions, and skilled appeals to religious prejudice."

In its way that speech established the popularity of Huxley as a debator, and effectually punctured one argument then coming into use in the discussion of evolution. It also was an incident never forgotten concerning Bishop Wilberforce. Huxley afterward wrote, "In justice to the Bishop, I am bound to say he bore me no malice, but was always courtesy itself when we met in after years." In the same letter Huxley says, "The odd part of the business is, that I should not have been present except for Robert Chambers."