The Bishop sat down; but Huxley, though directly attacked, did not rise until the meeting called for him. Then he "slowly and deliberately arose; a slight, tall figure, stern and pale, very quiet and very grave." He began with a general statement in defence of Darwin's theory. "I am here only in the interests of science, and I have not heard anything which can prejudice the case of my august client." Darwin's theory was an explanation of phenomena in Natural History, as the undulatory theory was of the phenomena of light. No one objected to the latter because an undulation of light had never been arrested and measured. Darwin offered an explanation of facts, and his book was full of new facts, all bearing on his theory. Without asserting that every part of that theory had been confirmed, he maintained that it was the best explanation of the origin of species which had yet been offered. As to the psychological distinction between men and animals, and the question of the Creation: "You say that development drives out the Creator; but you assert that God made you: and yet you know that you yourself were originally a little piece of matter no bigger than the end of this gold pencil-case." Nobody could say at what moment of the history of his development man became consciously intelligent. The whole question was not so much one of a transmutation or transition of species as of the production of forms which became permanent. The Ancon sheep was not produced gradually; it originated in the birth of the original parent of the whole stock, which had been kept up by a rigid system of artificial selection.
But if the question were to be treated, not as a matter for the calm investigation of science, but as a matter of sentiment, and if he were asked whether he would choose to be descended from 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, he must hesitate what answer to make.
The actual words were not taken down at the time; they were finely eloquent, and gained effect from the clear, deliberate utterance; but the nearest approach to them was recorded in a letter of J.R. Green, the future historian, written immediately after the meeting:—
I asserted—and I repeat—that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling, it would rather be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who, not content with (an equivocal[1]) success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has 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.
[Footnote 1: Referring to this letter afterwards, my father felt certain that he had never used the word "equivocal." In this he was borne out by Prof. Victor Carus and Prof. Farrar, who were present.]
The effect was electrical. When he first rose to speak he had been coldly received—no more than a cheer of encouragement from his immediate friends. As he made his points the applause grew. When he finished one half of the audience burst into a storm of cheers; the other was thunderstruck by the sacrilegious recoil of the Bishop's weapon upon his own head: a lady fainted, and had to be carried out. As soon as calm was restored Hooker leapt to his feet, though he hated public speaking yet more than his friend, and drove home the main scientific arguments with his own experience on the botanical side. The Bishop, be it recorded, bore no malice. Orator and wit as he was, he no doubt appreciated a debater whose skill in fence matched his own.
VIII
PUBLIC SPEAKING AND LECTURES
For Huxley, one result of the affair was that he became universally known, and not merely as he had been known to his immediate circle, as the most vigorous defender of Darwin—"Darwin's bulldog," as he playfully called himself. Another result was that he changed his idea as to the practical value of the art of public speaking. Walking away from the meeting with that other hater of speech-making, Hooker, he declared that he would thenceforth carefully cultivate it, and try to leave off hating it. The former resolution he carried out faithfully, with the result that he became one of the best speakers of his generation; in the latter he never quite succeeded. The nervous horror before making a public address seldom wholly left him; he used to say that when he stepped on the platform at the Royal Institution and heard the door click behind him, he knew what it must be like to be a condemned man stepping out to the gallows. Happily, no sign of nervousness ever showed itself; he gave the appearance of being equally master of himself and of his subject. His voice was not strong, but he had early learnt the lesson of clear enunciation. There were two letters he received when he began lecturing, and which he kept by him as a perpetual reminder, labelled "Good Advice." One was from a "working man" of his Monday evening audience in Jermyn Street, in 1855; the other, undated, from Mr. Jodrell, a great benefactor of science, who had heard him at the Royal Institution. These warned him against his habits of lecturing in a colloquial tone, which might suit a knot of students gathered round his table, but not a large audience; of running his words, especially technical terms, together, and of pouring out unfamiliar matter at breakneck speed. These early faults were so glaring that one institute in St. John's Wood, after hearing him, petitioned "not to have that young man again." He worked hard to cure himself, and the later audiences who flocked to his lectures could never have guessed at his early failings. The flow was as clear and even as the arrangement of the matter was lucid; the voice was not loud, but so distinct that it carried to the furthest benches. No syllable was slurred, no point hurried over. All this made for the lucid and comprehensible; well-chosen language and fine utterance shaped a perfect vehicle of thought. But it was the lucidity of the thought itself, thus expressed, that gave his lectures their quality. A clever and accomplished lady once, in intimate conversation, asked Mrs. Huxley what the reason could be that every one praised her husband so highly as a lecturer. "I can't understand it. He just lets the subject explain itself, and that's all." Profound, if unintended, compliment. It was his power of seeing things clearly, stripped of their non-essentials, that enabled him to make others see them clearly also. Nor did he forget the saying of that prince of popular expositors, Faraday, who, when asked, "How much may a popular lecturer suppose his audience knows?" replied emphatically, "Nothing." This same faculty, no doubt, was that which enabled him to write such admirable elementary text-books—a task which he regarded as one of the most difficult possible.
A notable description of his public lecturing in the seventies and early eighties is given by G. W. Smalley, correspondent of the New York Tribune, in his "London Letters":—