And again, on page 332:—
“The fundamental doctrine of the ‘Origin of Species,’ as of all forms of the theory of evolution applied to biology, is ‘that the innumerable species, genera, and families of organic beings with which the world is peopled have all descended, each within its own class or group, from common parents, and have all been modified in the course of descent.’”
Furthermore, on page 242 we read:—
“I venture to repeat what I have said before, that so far as the animal world is concerned, evolution is no longer a speculation, but a statement of historical fact. It takes its place alongside of those accepted truths which must be reckoned with by philosophers of all schools.”
And on the same page he quotes with approval the statement by M. Filhol of the results to which he had been led by his palæontological investigations:—
“Under the influence of natural conditions of which we have no exact knowledge, though traces of them are discoverable, species have been modified in a thousand ways: species have arisen which, becoming fixed, have thus produced a corresponding number of secondary species.”
Similarly, in the Obituary notice in Nature (1882), Huxley speaks of the secure position in which Darwin had placed the doctrine of evolution as his great achievement. The following eloquent passage occurs on page 247 of “Darwiniana”:—
“None have fought better, and none have been more fortunate, than Charles Darwin. He found a great truth trodden underfoot, reviled by bigots, and ridiculed by all the world; he lived long enough to see it, chiefly by his own efforts, irrefragibly established in science,...”
In the impressive speech in which Huxley handed over the statue of Darwin to the Prince of Wales, as representative of the Trustees of the British Museum, on June 9th, 1885 (“Darwiniana,” p. 248), the references to Darwin are most consistent with the view that the support to evolution was held by the speaker to be the great work of his life. Natural selection is not mentioned.
The next publication on this subject by Huxley is the celebrated chapter “On the Reception of the ‘Origin of Species,’” in the second volume of the great “Life and Letters.” In this chapter he speaks rather more confidently about natural selection than in some of the earlier essays and in the later speeches:—